The record temperatures will last until the very last hours of 2022. In line with the entire year, the final calendar day is expected to be "excessively hot." Temperatures could reach 23°C in Dax in the southwest, and 16°C in Paris. The average temperatures announced are 16°C for the northern part of the country, and 18°C for the south. "We will certainly have the hottest December 31 since measurements began in 1947," said Frédéric Nathan, a forecaster at Météo-France, "the temperature anomaly for the whole country could exceed 8°C, which is enormous." Over the last 75 years, the recorded temperature has only exceeded a daily average of 8°C on three occasions.
The Christmas period was also unusually warm, with the highest-ever recorded average temperature on December 24 and 25. Until the 27th, however, the December average remained within the normal range nationwide because the cold snap at the beginning of the month compensated for the subsequent high temperatures. The winter heat wave that arrived on Wednesday and will continue until the end of the year, however, will place December back above average. The first days of January should also be relatively warm.
By the end of November, Météo-France had announced that 2022 would be the hottest year ever recorded in the country, far exceeding the previous record of 2020. The situation was due to several early and late heat waves and the breaking of multiple temperature records. "Punctuated by climate extremes, 2022 is symptomatic of climate change," Météo-France stated.
The new period of mildness is due to a very warm air mass rising from the south, pushed by a low-pressure episode over the Atlantic Ocean. "When there are areas of low pressure in England, Portugal or the Azores, it pushes the winds from Africa towards Spain and France," explained Davide Faranda, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) researcher at the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute. "This creates a sort of 'conveyor belt' phenomenon that transports heat and allows record temperatures to be reached."
Winter heat
Climate change, caused by human activities and in particular by the burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal), has already caused global warming of 1.2°C. As a result of this phenomenon, which affects all regions of the globe, the subtropical air that arrives in France is much warmer than it was thirty or fifty years ago. "This atmospheric circulation is not completely abnormal, but with climate change, a classic mild wave can quickly become exceptional," said Gerhard Krinner, climatologist and director of research at the CNRS, "Warming is superimposed on the variability of the weather."
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