The sad and uncertain science of meteorology

Qoheleth says: "He who has labored with wisdom, knowledge, and success must then leave his portion to another who has not labored at all. This too is vanity and a great evil..." If this is the fate of those who have labored successfully, what will be said by those who, despite having labored with wisdom and knowledge, have not succeeded? They can only tell their story, in the hope that it will serve as a lesson to those who come after them, so that they may avoid the errors highlighted and act with wisdom. This is what motivates me to outline the events of meteorology in Italy with the raw sincerity and rigor of one who was a participant and protagonist, albeit with the bitterness of the eternal loser.

For me, my story begins when I crossed the threshold of the Florence Air Warfare School, at the Cascine, in September 1965. Three months later, I emerged with the rank of second lieutenant in the Air Force Engineers, specializing in physicists, and having decided to dedicate myself forever to atmospheric physics and meteorology. Colonel Gazzola's dynamic meteorology lessons, in particular, had opened up a new world to me: that of geophysics, with his clear equations explaining the motion of fluid air surrounding a rotating sphere, our Earth. Another colonel, Ottavio Vittori, to whom I was assigned in service, did the rest. He made me fall in love with clouds, with their still-hidden mysteries, a physics of the complicated natural, with complex phenomena that can be explained by the superposition of elementary and already known physical processes.

But enough biographical notes. Just enough to describe meteorology in Italy at the time. A discipline cultivated at the highest levels, but outside the official academy, outside the university system. The Air Force supervised its own training, completely autonomously . And I am a child of this training. But the country was beginning to change its mind in those years. It believed that the discipline, and related research, should be cultivated within the National Research Council (CNR). There was also a very valid reason: women could not enter the Air Force and were excluded from meteorology training from the outset . Thus, the 1970s saw the gradual transfer of meteorology research to the CNR. Up to this point, an understandable choice. Less understandable is what happened at the end of that decade. That is, the political decision that meteorology, at the service of the country, should be handled by the regions, starting with Emilia Romagna, which was to become the model region. I participated in this transitional phase as a young researcher, but already a critic. The other regions will have to follow in no particular order. Everything will be done by addition, without eliminating any entities. The Air Force service, SMAM, will remain, and the 19 regional meteorological services will be gradually added. As for Emilia Romagna, the goal may have been valid and ambitious: with the physics training provided by the prestigious University of Bologna, it was thought that research could be immediately put into practice as an advanced service for the country. But this was not the case: while new personnel were drawn from our graduates, the autonomy of the new agency was emphasized, almost immediately severing the research-service transmission belt. The other regions followed with delay and inefficiency, so much so that even today we see this Harlequin outfit with patches of varying quality.

Meanwhile, at the national level, the National Group for Atmospheric and Ocean Physics (GNFAO) had been formed, coordinating all research outside the Air Force. This was the best time for research: the CNR performed both its mandated functions: research, through its own bodies, and coordination and oversight of external research initiatives, observatories, university units, meteorological instrumentation companies, and state technical services. Within the CNR, it included the National Group for Defense against Hydrogeological Disasters (GNDIC), which brought together geologists and physicists in the management of meteorological risks.

But the next crucial step, in a negative sense, was the elimination of the Gndici, concurrently with the establishment of the Department of Civil Protection. A group of hydraulic engineers (not hydrologists!), relying on political power and frustrated by no longer having dams to design, seized academic power over atmospheric physicists and took over the nascent Civil Protection Department's role in meteorological risk management. This exacerbated the conflict between national and regional responsibilities, manifested between functional centers (coinciding with regional weather services) and centers of expertise (in research institutes). A conflict that continues to this day .

I recall a visit I made to Professor Randeu at the Polytechnic University of Graz in Austria in the early 1990s, then coordinator of Cerad (the radar meteorological system that united all of Central Europe). He asked me the reasons for Italy's delay in participating in the European radar meteorological system. I responded with embarrassment, knowing that some radars had been in packing crates for years, uninstalled; others were owned by the regions, others by universities, and still others by private individuals, but inadequate. A permanent embarrassment in Europe, for which I should be ashamed for my country at international conferences. Furthermore, I was regularly excluded from committees for the purchase of new meteorological radars, despite the fact that, as a young director of the CNR storm observatory in Verona, I had used the prestigious Selenia Meteor 300 for five years, the only meteorological radar in Italy at the time. Political pressure continued with its devastating effectiveness with the Bassanini law, which assigned to the regions what should never be regionalized . In addition to regional meteorological services, the responsibilities of the state's technical services—the Navy's Hydrographic Service, and the Public Works Department—also pass to the regions. Obtaining precipitation data thus becomes an exercise in bureaucratic acrobatics. Politics also exercises its evil arts in the establishment of ISPRA, the Water Authority, and the various ARPA agencies . In the competition commissions, if they even exist, university professors are avoided to gain a free hand in hiring. Thus, we arrive at the present day, with the Civil Protection Department clearly incapable of managing meteorological risks. All post-event reports, when they are produced, are self-exculpatory. They are all unpredictable water bombs, extreme events. There is no radar-meteorological documentation of the events. There is no center that deals with the advanced aspects of future meteorology: nowcasting as a synthesis of radar-meteorology, satellite meteorology, satellite radar, and the processing of mass conventional data. This activity cannot be adequately developed within the 19 regional services.

In 2016, an article by Gianantonio Stella in the Corriere della Sera with the telling title, "Professor Prodi against weather federalism," sparked a veritable persecution against me that continues to this day: I was expelled from ISAC, the institute where I founded radar meteorology and cloud physics laboratories. This institute was, unheard of, transferred from physics to chemistry. I was expelled from the research area of ​​the CNR in Bologna that I founded, and from my Rivona project in Puglia involving two advanced weather radars. The degree program in Meteorology and Environment that I founded at the University of Ferrara, the only one in Italy, was closed.

We are now in the present day, with the establishment of the Italian Meteorological Agency (Agenzia Meteo-Italia), a tragicomedy, led by those who, by its statute, oppose it, a committee appointed by the very agencies that should themselves be abolished . The legislation is state-sponsored, under international pressure, not assigned to the regions. But the new agency's statute, in defiance of the recommendations received, entrusts it to a steering committee composed of regional representatives. It takes no special prophecy to predict its certain failure, while the inability of those appointed to its management to give the Agency a decent face is evident. It is known that the current director cannot be renewed beyond April 2026. In short, a huge mess has been created, resulting in exorbitant costs and guaranteeing the backwardness of Italian meteorology for decades to come compared to foreign services. The lack of a center for advanced meteorology continues.

Meanwhile , the public is virtually kept in the dark about the enormous forecasting capabilities of the national radar network, both in terms of type and detail, finally made possible after so long due to the enormous drain on public funds . Try typing rainviewer or national radar network and let me know your reactions.

I've deliberately excluded from this story both the climate change hoax and the failure to warn of aerosol contagion in the management of the Covid epidemic, which both stem from a complete ignorance of the physical basis. And they further fuel the persecution against me. But I've spoken about them on other occasions.

A truly decisive reform that abolishes the 19 regional services, transforming them into meteorological information offices serving local businesses. These offices would thus be financially independent, no longer being a taxpayer's responsibility. Reestablishing a national service responsible for research and advanced services would result in significant savings and a return to true efficiency.

Franco Prodi is a full professor of Atmospheric Physics, former director of FISBAT CNT and ISAC CNR, member of the National Academy of Sciences, known as the Academy of the Forty

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