Until the last day, the whole range of superlatives will have been summoned to try to qualify a year ” extraordinary ” and especially “dramatic” in terms of climate. Meteo France confirmed, Friday, January 6 : 2022 ranks as the hottest year ever recorded in France since records began in 1900. The twelve months, ending with a New Year’s Eve at record temperatures, were punctuated by multiple disasters – heat waves, fires, droughts, floods. An exceptional situation which will become the norm around 2050 under the effect of the climate crisis, if greenhouse gas emissions are not greatly reduced.
The temperature reached 14.5°C nationwide for the whole year, 0.4°C higher than the previous record high in 2020. ” It’s enormous. Usually, when you break a record, it’s by little. This time, it’s as if we had climbed four steps at once.explains Christine Berne, climatologist at Météo-France.
Month after month, the heat offered little respite and no part of the territory was spared. The country suffocated under three heat waves – an exceptional duration of thirty-three days of heat wave – during the summer, the second hottest behind 2003. Many temperature records were shattered, mainly on the west facade, where many cities have exceeded 40°C, including in Brittany. The temperature anomalies recorded between May and August would have been almost impossible without climate change, which made them about 500 times more likely but also much more intense.
Negative consequences for fauna and flora
The year, which scrambled the seasons more than ever, also recorded three other episodes of extremely early or late heat, in May, at the end of October and at the end of December. Autumn ranks as hottest ever recorded, as well as the end of the year. On December 31, temperatures exceeded average seasonal norms by 8°C in the territory, flirting with summer weather. Spikes at 24°C in Dax or 23°C in Biscarosse for instance been recorded.
This episode, like that of October, was caused by a mass of very hot air coming from the Sahara, pushed by a depression stationed above the Atlantic Ocean. A classic configuration but aggravated by climate change which further warms this already hot air. This phenomenon, which has panicked the mercury over a large part of Europe, will continue until the middle of the month.
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