In addition to the classic weather and beach weather, Météo-France offers from today, and throughout the summer, a daily forest weather forecast. To find out more, watch the column “A planet, solutions”, produced by NOWU in partnership with franceinfo.
This new “forest weather forecast” should be officially launched this Friday afternoon during a presidential trip to the civil security air base of Nîmes-Garons, in the Gard, in order to discuss with the actors involved. in preventing and fighting forest fires.
This tool developed by Météo-France will be in the form of a map of France, with details department by department of the level of vigilance in the face of the risk of fire. The scale will be based on 4 levels of vigilance (from low to very high) and will be associated with a color code (green, yellow, orange, red).
This level of vigilance will be established on the basis of forecasts of several meteorological parameters, such as air humidity, wind strength or the state of dryness of the vegetation. The first forest weather report should be available from June 2 at 5 p.m. on the Météo-France website.
50% more “extreme” fires by 2100
This increased monitoring of the risk of forest fires reveals a growing concern about this phenomenon.
Driven by climate change, vegetation fires are expected to develop, in France and around the world. According to a report by the United Nations Environment Program published in early 2022, the risk of extreme (uncontrollable) fires could increase by 14% by 2030, 30% by 2050 and 50% by 2100. .
What is the relationship between fire and climate? If we take for example the level of dryness of the vegetation (one of the criteria which will be monitored by Météo-France), this plays a key role in the speed of propagation, the extent, the duration of a fire: the drier the plants, the easier they are to ignite.
But climate change greatly increases the risk of drought. They can be longer, more intense, earlier, later… Vegetation is becoming more and more sensitive to fires.
France is not spared by the phenomenon, as Benoît Thomé explains, director of institutional missions at Météo-France: The “wildfire” season starts earlier and ends later each year. It is now considered that there may be a significant and strong risk from June until mid-September. »
The risk also extends geographically, he continues: ” For several years now, Météo-France has offered enhanced support to certain prefectures. Until now it was limited to the extreme south of France, but, noting that the forest fires were becoming more and more important elsewhere on the territory, we were asked to extend this reinforced support to the south. -west, and from next year, to the west. »
What to do to prevent the risk of forest fires?
In France, 9 out of 10 fire starts are of human origin, either through economic activity (construction sites, agricultural activities, etc.), or through everyday actions (cigarette butts, barbecues or campfires) which could therefore easily be avoided.
A few good things to keep in mind: nAbove all, do not throw cigarette butts in nature, even when they are extinguished, oorganize your barbecue and tinker away from the vegetation.
More globally, the United Nations Environment Program revealed in its report that planning to prevent fires received less than 1% of total firefighting funding. Its authors recommended better distributing funding, also developing prevention, for example constructing buildings at a distance from vegetation, or creating “buffer zones” between forests and roads and homes.
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