“We are surprised, the calendar is accelerating”, recognizes a climatologist

Faced with a summer that is breaking heat and drought records, climatologist and meteorologist Robert Vautard, coordinator of a chapter of the sixth IPCC report, acknowledges on franceinfo Thursday August 11 that these extremes exceed established models and affirms that scientists are “all surprised”. Whereas “the calendar is accelerating”, it warns of the need to prepare for 50 degrees in France.

franceinfo: How do you view these intense heat waves that last in France and in Europe?

Robert Vautard: We are all surprised, not only this summer, but also the few years before, already in 2019, with impressive records that were broken in France, but also in 2021 with these famous 49 degrees in British Columbia in Canada, a country that is very far north. Climatologists are really surprised by these records broken by very far: normally, records are broken by one or two degrees maximum, there, it goes much further. The schedule is accelerating.

Doesn’t this correspond to what the IPCC predicted and what it had been warning about for years?

As the IPCC scenarios already underestimate the evolutions of the past, we can obviously ask questions for the future. But as long as we have not found the cause of this underestimation of the models on the situation in Western Europe, we cannot say so. It is a subject of research. It is nevertheless probable that the evolutions will continue to be stronger than those which were predicted. I think that, particularly in Europe, especially in the West, you have to be prepared for temperatures and major heat waves that can last all summer long in the decades to come, even in the years to come. In reality, our models predict an evolution for today and tomorrow, but observations show that it is faster than expected. Typically, for London, the heat waves have increased by four degrees while the models are more like two degrees.

“We underestimate the speed of change, it’s very clear. I don’t think we’re ready.”

Robert Vautard, climatologist and meteorologist

at franceinfo

What role do you take, as a scientist?

We must, as scientists, keep a cool head while warning about these things that we do not yet understand. That’s why I take the liberty of saying that we have to prepare for very high scenarios like 50 degrees in France. It’s not impossible, so you have to know how to prepare for it because the consequences can be much greater than the current heat waves. We need to go much further.