In the middle of the night, as the tide rose, winds whipped and waves grew, an engineer in a command center on an artificial island on the rim of the Venice lagoon clicked an arrow on his screen reading, “Lift.”
Piazza San Marco floods some 100 days per year. Though a barrier system is raised to prevent more extreme events, the inundation in Venice's most iconic spot happens even on normal days.
A system of moveable walls, called Moses, protects Venice from colossal high tides that are worsening with climate change. But they’re also destroying the marshes that keep the lagoon alive.
Saltmarshes are havens of biodiversity and act as natural barriers to storms - but they can also sequester carbon from the atmosphere 50 times faster than a tropical forest.
Venice saw a record five exceptional floods over six weeks in late 2019 that triggered fears about the impact of worsening climate change on the Italian lagoon city beloved by tourists.
