ATfter a period of very good weather which favored the awakening of nature, France will experience a cold spell with frosts which could affect crops, but less than those, devastating, of last year, warned Météo- France on Monday March 28. “We are coming out of a period of about ten days of marked clemency, with maximum sunshine […] and temperatures of 6 to 8 degrees above normal” due to the presence of an anticyclone, said Olivier Proust, forecaster at Météo-France, during a press briefing.
By the weekend, “in a few days, we will go to temperatures of 3 to 6 degrees below normal” due to a disturbance accompanied by descents of cold air from the North. From Thursday to Saturday, several regions could therefore experience episodes of cold “worthy of a month of February”, even snow in the North, the Center and the mountains, as well as frosts.
According to Météo-France, the episode should however be less marked than that of early April 2021 which had ravaged several arboriculture regions and some of the most prestigious vineyards in the country, resulting in around two billion euros in lost sales. business, according to agricultural unions. It is the conjunction of an early spring, causing the beginning of budding of the vegetation (bud burst), followed by an episode of frost, not necessarily unusual for the season, which accentuates the danger for the crops.
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Vigilance is required for arboriculture or cereals
Scientists specializing in the “attribution” of certain weather phenomena to climate change had thus concluded that it had “increased by about 60%” the probability of an episode like that of April 2021. But “we can hope to have less damage” than last year during the new cold snap, said Mathieu Regimbeau, agrometeorologist at Météo-France. Firstly because it will be “less brutal and more moderate”, but also because “not all the vegetation has started to bud”.
The vines in particular should suffer less, even if vigilance is required for arboriculture or cereals, he estimated. “We can expect a resurgence of these events”, however warned the specialist, since the warming will make “the vegetation will be more and more in advance” and therefore at the mercy of an episode of cold. The attribution study on the 2021 episode had also warned that the phenomenon risked “accelerating in the future” since a warming of 2°C compared to the pre-industrial era, i.e. maximum warming objective of the Paris agreement which seems for the moment out of reach, would see “another 40% increase in the probability of this type of event”.
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