Rather than heat waves, France has been facing an ocean of heat in recent months. After an exceptionally hot summer, France is experiencing its hottest September ever measured, Météo-France announced this Friday.
With an extraordinary heatwave at the start of the month and a heat wave beginning, “we are already completely sure that this month of September will be the hottest ever recorded in mainland France”, “with an average temperature of 21 .5°C” still provisional, or at least 3.5°C above the normals of the previous three decades, said climatologist Christine Berne during a press briefing.
“Glaring” heat anomalies
September 2023 “will exceed by more than one degree” the previous records of September 1949 as well as September 1961, which is “a really very important step”. “These temperatures are also already slightly above the averages for July and August in France,” the hottest months of the year in general, she added. “This month of September is very special” and “these heat anomalies are glaring in all regions,” added the climatologist.
After the 4th hottest summer in mainland France, marked by an unusual late heatwave, September 2023 also began with an “extremely hot” and “late” sequence from September 3 to 11, regularly exceeding 35-37 °C in some regions. Fourteen departments had been placed on heatwave orange vigilance, an unprecedented measure outside the summer period.
A scorching October in its turn?
“Climate change favors an extension of heat waves towards (…) spring and around September, or even early October” as predicted by the models of IPCC experts, added Christine Berne. This configuration caused by greenhouse gas emissions due to human activity combined with a meteorological phenomenon of hot air rising from the Sahara, as in 1949 and 1961.
The end of the month is once again marked by unusual late heat forecast for Sunday and especially Monday with “temperatures which could point towards 35 degrees at most from the south-western plains to the eastern plains of Auvergne”, a announced Tristan Amm, forecaster. “Many heat records for a month of October are threatened” to be broken with forecasts of anomalies compared to the 1991-2020 period “which sometimes peak beyond ten degrees” and “are enormous”.