This end of the year is milder than normal for the season. A peak of sweetness is expected for December 31. The transition to 2023 will take place under the sign of climate change, after twelve months marked by strong anomalies.
Temperature anomalies have been linked over the course of 2022. We still remember this exceptionally dry summer, with scorching heat, while temperature records were linked. Then it was fall’s turn to be far too mild compared to seasonal norms. Now, it’s the temperatures of this holiday season that are anything but normal.
Météo-France confirms it: this end of the year is characterized by record mildness. This will continue until the end, since a peak of sweetness is expected for this December 31, 2022. The thermal excess (i.e. the number of degrees above normal) will reach +8 degrees, d after Météo-France.
” This New Year’s Eve should be the mildest ever observed across the country (archive beginning in 1947) to symbolically close an exceptionally mild year 2022 “says the service. It should also enter the top 5 of the mildest days recorded in December in France. And finally, this +8 degree disparity could also be one of the largest heat anomalies ever recorded in any month.
In Nice alone, the so-called “tropical” nights, above 20 degrees, accumulate at the end of the year. In Corsica, the mildness ends a year 2022 which quite simply becomes the hottest year ever recorded on the island, maybe even before 2003. This end-of-year anomaly is not exclusive to France: Europe is concerned with temperatures well above normal for the season over a large part of the continent.
This end of the year is still a reminder of climate change
Yes, this extreme sweetness is largely linked to climate change. The latter increases the amplitude of a natural phenomenon. ” Human influence makes a classic weather dynamic an extreme hot “, recalls the climatologist Christophe Cassou on Twitter.
Climate change, due to human activities, is indeed increasing the magnitude and frequency of weather anomalies. Record peaks (both hot and cold, for that matter) like extreme events are increasingly concentrated in the 21st century, where they were rarer and more distant before.
” This wave of exceptional winter mildness is consistent with climate change “, confirms Météo-France on its site. ” The rarefaction of cold spells is a marker of climate change: the last cold spell across the country dates back to February 2012… almost 10 years ago. On the other hand, early peaks of sweetness or heat are more frequent. »