The climate of Etruscan Italy was essentially the Mediterranean climate of today: a wet winter and an extremely dry summer. However, some authors suggest that the climate may have been warmer and drier, which would have had implications both for agriculture and health. The altitudinal relief emphasized below was more important in determining variation in the nature of rainfall, temperature, and vegetational cover. The modern rainfall of the Italian peninsula is profoundly determined by relief and season and there is every reason to think that this would have been broadly the same in the Etruscan period. Annual rainfall exceeds 1,000 millimeters above 1,000 meters and drops to lower levels in the hill and coastal regions, ranging from 800 to 900 millimeters in the Arno Valley to 600 to 700 millimeters in southeastern Italy. The changes in environment were highly regional, generally precipitated by human action working on the potential fragility of the Mediterranean landscape, especially at times of seasonally low vegetation cover between September and November, leading to erosion and alluviation.
See also GEOMORPHOLOGY.
Historical Dictionary of the Etruscans. Simon K. F. Stoddart.