Heat waves during summer represent severe threats for human health, requiring adequate forecasting and appropriate data validation in order to provide the National Health System, Protezione Civile and non-profit organizations with sufficient and reliable information to cope efficiently with such events.
Italy, during the summer, constantly faces with intense heat waves; since 2003 the interest to the matter has been growing enormously with emphasis on its epidemiological consequences.
Centro di Ricerche in Bioclimatologia Medica, Biotecnologie e Medicine Naturali of the University of Milan and Meteonetwork, on the basis of observed data recorded by our weather stations network, developed a project of technical and scientific cooperation, called Weatherness, the latter aiming at spreading around relevant biomedical information.
As WMO emphasized in 2001 World Meteorological Day “Volunteers for the weather, climate and water” the contribution of volunteers in this field can be absolutely remarkable.
After long validation and analysis processes on a fairly large number of weather stations the University and Meteonetwork decided to gradually release a range of bio-meteorological indices (2 uniquely regarding the summer, 1 valid for both summer and winter, 1 for the winter only), easily accessible and comprehensible by the public.

Weatherness consists of 4 different indices:
1) Heat Index (HI): expressed referring to a 7-levels code, ranging from “comfort-level 0” to “extreme discomfort-level 6”
2) New Summer Simmer Index (NSSI): expressed referring to a 6-levels code from “comfort” to “extreme heat”.
3) New Windchill Index
4) Thermohygrometric Index

The results are constantly updated and displayed on meteonetwork’s weather stations live map under the “weatherness” option: clicking on one specific station allows you to investigate the behaviour of the indices in the last 7 days.

www.meteonetwork.it/rete/livemap/

Along with the evaluation of those indices for the entire country, the main purpose of the project is to set up and develop a database containing scientifically reliable data, available for future research and projects.

A slightly different activity consists of the evaluation of the Thom Discomfort Index: Meteonewtork produces 48h-forecast for this index with its WRF 5km model implemented over northern and southern Italy.

[click on "altri parametri" on the left hand menu and you will find the THOM Index]

www.meteonetwork.it/models/


The projects has just fully started and hopefully by the end of the summer we will have a broader view on its results.