Western Europe is preparing for a very hot summer
Stéphane Foucart and Pierre Le Hir LEMONDE | 05.07.10 | 14h59 • Updated the 05.07.10 | 15h00
Since 2003 and its deadly summer, the French government is preparing, at the beginning of each summer season, to face possible waves of intense heat. The high temperatures of these last days are, again, fear episodes of heat wave during the summer.
A brief alert was also launched for the Rhône-Alpes region on Friday, July 2. The day before, the Minister of Health, Roselyne Bachelot, had announced that the heat wave plan - which since 2004 has been automatically activated on June 1 - would be reinforced. Regional health agencies will be asked to be particularly vigilant so that hospitals are not overwhelmed in the event of a heat wave, as was the case in 2003. It is to them that the director general of the health will transmit the warning messages issued by Météo France and by the health watch institute so that they can organize, without fault, "the permanence and continuity of care," explained the minister.
In fact, Météo France's seasonal forecasts anticipate, for the months of July and August, temperatures that are generally above seasonal norms over the whole of Western Europe. Which means likely heat waves. Most models "forecast precipitation amounts below seasonal norms," Météo France cautiously anticipates in a press release published in early June. In which case tensions in the management of water resources in the north-west of metropolitan France cannot be ruled out.
Air temperatures over Western Europe are closely related to that of the Atlantic Ocean. However, explains Christophe Cassou, researcher (CNRS) at the European Center for Advanced Research and Training in Scientific Computing (Cerfacs), "the" hot anomalies "observed over the entire tropical Atlantic are the strongest ever observed".
Over the past thirty years, the last record for heat in this ocean basin, reached in 2005, had seen surface waters warm by 0,9 ° C above average. Today, this "hot anomaly" reaches around 1,5 ° C.
The hot summer that is coming is, in part, the repercussion of the particularly cold and long winter which preceded it over Western Europe and the Atlantic basin. "We had a particularly atypical winter in terms of atmospheric circulation, explains Mr. Cassou. The virtual absence of the Azores high pressure has led to a weakening of the easterly winds, the trade winds. Suddenly, these have less blew over the Atlantic, which was able to store more heat. "
An unusual amount of energy has accumulated over the first fifty meters of the tropical Atlantic. This situation has not only an impact on the air temperatures in Europe: it also promotes the birth of cyclones which, formed off West Africa, come to strike Central America. These complex atmospheric phenomena can only be formed when the surface waters of the ocean exceed 27 ° C or 28 ° C.
(...)
2010: record year of temperatures?
According to the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the first five months of the year 2010 have been the hottest since monthly temperatures began to rise in the late nineteenth century. This suggests that 2010 could be the hottest year ever recorded.
This situation is partly due to the phenomenon El Nino which has been installed since the beginning of the year on the tropical Pacific. Another indication of abnormally high temperatures is the reduction in the extent of the Arctic sea ice. At the end of June, it was about 250 000 km2 lower than its June 2007 level. This year already marked a record with over a million km2 lost compared to the average 1979-2000.
Suite and source: http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2 ... _3244.html
Finally it seems that we admit that climate change has an impact on the climate of our regions ...
Since early March (where he made 25 ° C home) I felt that summer would be hot ...
This is the 1ere time also I hear on TV an engineer from France weather talk about the link between warming and climate in France ...
But it's probably too late to say ...