This is unheard of since the beginning of weather measurements. “Since October 15, average temperatures across the country have varied between 17.5°C and 19°C, temperatures worthy of a month of June”, explains Christine Berne, climatologist at Météo France. We have therefore been 4°C to 5° above normal for the season for 10 days already. Around us, Spain, Germany, Portugal and southern Great Britain are going through this same late heat episode. It should last another week, at least.
>> INFOGRAPHICS. Visualize the “totally unprecedented” heat wave that has affected France since mid-October
This atypical situation is explained both by a phenomenon of a heat plume, a mass of hot air rising from the Sahara and which finds itself as if sucked in by a depression on the Atlantic and by a manifestation of climate change. Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been anticipating this lengthening summer phenomenon for several years now, with earlier heat waves in May and later in the fall. This year 2022 is an illustration of this: since before experiencing this unprecedented heat in October, we also experienced an exceptional heat wave in mid-May.
If we look at the precipitation side, it is also atypical, with a rain deficit of 30% in October. According to the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM), even though September was wet, the rains were insufficient to recharge the groundwater tables, so the situation remains worrying over a large part of the territory.
Should we expect an exceptionally cold winter? Météo France’s seasonal forecasts for November, December and January will be published in the coming days. But in the meantime, according to the work of the European Center for Meteorological Forecasting, in the medium term, there is at this stage no signal of an abnormal cold wave for the next three months.
According to IPCC projections, with climate change, we are moving more in the direction of a rarefaction of cold spells. The last in France dates from 2012, with temperatures of minus 10°C recorded in several regions.