While a new heat wave begins this Monday in France, climatologist Françoise Vimeux, from the Research Institute for Development (IRD), believes that we will have to get used to.
Scientists predict heatwaves in the future to be more frequent, more intense and sometimes earlier or later.
For meteorologist Françoise Vimeux, heat waves could become much more frequent and intense./IRD
A new heat peak is announced on Monday in France.
Can we expect in the future, thanks to global warming, heat wave episodes including in September?
FRANÇOISE VIMEUX.
This type of heat spike in September is a perfect example of what could await us by 2050. Heatwaves will not only be more and more frequent, intense and long, but they should also be earlier and sometimes later. .
According to the numerical simulations available to us, if greenhouse gas emissions do not decrease, a very hot summer like that of 2003, marked by an exceptional heat wave, would be considered by the middle of the 21st century to be a normal, even chilly summer.
Was 2020 marked by new temperature records?
It was marked by two exceptional events.
The first happened on August 16 in the United States: the temperature rose to 54.4 ° C in the Valley of Death, which is an absolute record.
And then this summer, we exceeded 38 ° C in the Arctic, north of the Arctic Circle, which had never been observed in this region where the mercury is often well below 20 ° C in summer.
And in France ?
We too have had an exceptional year in several ways.
First, the first half was the hottest on record.
Then, summer 2020 is among the ten hottest summers we have experienced since the start of the 20th century.
Finally, August was the fifteenth consecutive month marked by temperatures higher than the average over the reference period from 1981 to 2010.
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We have the impression that global warming is even faster than what climatologists announced a few years ago.
This is only an impression, because the first models of climatologists, from the end of the 1970s, established projections quite close to what we experience today in terms of temperature, without change in our gas emissions. Greenhouse effect.
But it is true that certain processes are accelerating, such as the melting of the Arctic sea ice in summer, which specialists had not anticipated to be so significant.
Can we imagine one day seeing the thermometer exceed 50 ° C in France?
It is very likely but it would then be a local record, recorded for a short period of time.
We have already beaten an absolute temperature record on the scale of France with more than 46 ° C in Hérault during the month of July 2019. Therefore, 50 ° C at a given location for a few minutes in 2050, it is no longer science fiction.
Are the monster fires ravaging the American West linked to global warming?
These fires are often the result of a lack of rain which makes the soil and vegetation very dry, which favors the spread of fires.
In recent months in the Arctic, there has been a huge number of brush fires linked to the high temperatures in the region and the dry land.
Beyond the increased heat wave risks, are there other threats hanging over France?
Yes, especially the risks of submersion linked to the rise in sea level. During storm Xynthia, the surge had reached 1.60 m.
This level could be reached in the future during storms considered classic in winter.
Because of the warming of the atmosphere and the sea, the circulation of the great atmospheric currents, the distribution of the rains and their intensity are likely to be upset.
Thus, for example, we expect to see more intense and rainier cyclones in the overseas territories and more violent Cevennes episodes in the Mediterranean.
