Temperatures rising from 2.1 to 3.5 degrees Celcius by the end of the century: these are the projections of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in its latest report. For Météo-France researchers, this future is already a reality.
At the Toulouse headquarters, a team of “Special Envoy” interviewed Jean-Michel Soubeyroux, scientific director of Climatology. Thanks to a supercomputer (capable of performing 21 million billion operations per second), it is developing the maps that serve as a reference for the authorities to anticipate global warming. The ones he shows us are saturated with red.
Here is, according to his forecasts, what awaits France in 2050: 3 degrees more than current averages “in a large south-eastern quarter“or even 3.5 degrees in mountain areas,”which heat up even faster than lowland areas“The areas that warm the least, such as the north of the country, still gain 2 degrees.
Two or three degrees more, is it that big?
“Two degrees is the warming we have experienced in France since the pre-industrial era. Two degrees is the melting of almost all the glaciers in the Pyrenees.”
Jean-Michel Soubeyroux, Météo-Franceto “Special Envoy”
A few degrees more, that means peaks at 50 degrees, twenty consecutive days of heatwave, and tropical nights. Something to regret for the 46 recorded in the South on June 28, 2019 – the absolute heat record in France.
“Special Envoy” imagined it, this south of France in June 2050, made unlivable by the rise in temperatures. A burning desert with the air of the Far West, without even the freshness of sea bathing: in waters that have become warmer, all invasive species, such as jellyfish, will have proliferated …
Extract from “France at 50 degrees”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on October 28, 2021.
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