After a month of May with record temperatures, France is undergoing a heat wave of unprecedented precocity, with heat peaks expected for the next few hours above 40 ° C, as in Spain, a neighboring country which has been suffocating for several days already. .
Twenty-five French departments were placed on Thursday in heatwave orange vigilance, and twelve in red vigilance, i.e. a third of the country, mainly in the South-West and West.
France has been affected since Tuesday by this early heat wave, arriving from the Maghreb via the Iberian Peninsula. Spain, meanwhile, was facing fires on Thursday.
Temperatures soared across Spain last weekend, with highs of up to 43C. According to AEMET, the Spanish meteorological agency, the heat wave, also unusual for mid-June, is expected to last until Saturday.
For scientists, the multiplication, intensification and lengthening of heat waves, aggravated by greenhouse gas emissions, constitute an unequivocal marker of global warming.
And the consequences of this disruption are clear, they point out: fires as far away as Siberia, melting sea ice in the Arctic, droughts, record temperatures on all continents, cyclones and other extreme climatic events.
Although located in the “temperate” climatic zone, France, since the particularly trying heat wave of 1976, has experienced episodes of this type that are more and more frequent, intense or early.
Météo-France had announced for Thursday temperatures of 34 to 38 ° C, with possible peaks up to 39-40 ° C in the shade locally. The thermometer climbed well to 40 ° C in Saint-Jean-de-Minervois, in Hérault (South) in the afternoon.
On Friday, the weather will be scorching over much of the country, with the heat spreading to northern regions and intensifying further in the west and south. To the point that schoolchildren from departments on red alert have been allowed to stay at home.
The peak of intensity is however scheduled for Saturday, before the arrival overnight of rain and thunderstorms on the Atlantic coast.
Retirement homes are closing in, nearly 20 years after the August 2003 heat wave in France, which killed 15,000 elderly and frail people in particular, according to the National Institute for Demographic Studies.
A free “Heatwave info service” number has been activated by the government, and cities have decided to extend the opening hours of parks or install foggers.
Drought and fires
At the same time, French departments have already taken measures to restrict water consumption in the face of the lack of rain in recent months. However, the heat wave “has an aggravating effect on the dryness of the soil” after a particularly dry spring and winter and accentuates “the risk of forest fire”, explained to Agence France-Presse Olivier Proust, forecaster at Météo- France.
In northern Italy, water is already rationed by towns in the Po plain, and Lombardy was preparing on Thursday to declare a state of emergency in the face of a record drought threatening crops.
The Po plain, which crosses the north of the country and is home to important agricultural crops, is facing its worst drought in 70 years. Some areas have not received rainfall for more than 110 days, according to the Po River Observatory, the peninsula’s largest water reservoir.
In Spain, forest fires are already here. The most worrying fire broke out there near Baldomar, in the province of Lérida, in Catalonia (northeast). The fire has already destroyed 500 hectares of forest there, but has “the potential” to spread to 20,000 hectares, according to the regional government.
No one has yet been evacuated, but authorities have locked down some areas as a precaution.
In Lérida, temperatures of up to 41°C were expected on Thursday, according to AEMET, which also forecast temperatures above 40°C in Badajoz (southwest) and Zaragoza (northeast).
In Catalonia, two forest fires were active Thursday morning, in Solsonès and Terra Alta, while another fire broke out in the Sierra de la Culebra, in Zamora (center).
Spain, which this year experienced its hottest May since the turn of the century, according to the meteorological agency, has already gone through four episodes of extreme temperatures in the past ten months.