why is the phenomenon recurrent?

France is heating up, even overheating, for the third consecutive time in two months. 26 departments are on heatwave vigilance, Wednesday August 3. Heat wave has nothing to do with that of 2003, during which an anticyclone stagnated over the country. Today, it is another phenomenon, repetitive, with heat records: spikes at 40°C and very few places where it’s under 30 °C.

“We have a depression on the Atlantic which has a heat pump effect and which sends heat back from North Africa to France. These so-called heat pump heat waves are relatively intense but generally rather short. We’re talking about two to three days of big heat spikes with really high temperatures.”explains Peter Huatweather forecaster. Scientists have demonstrated that climate change is at work, caused by greenhouse gas emissions.