Hot Stuff: France's Climate Change Summer Party
Record-high temperatures, drought, pestilence. The nation rocked the apocalypse like there was no tomorrow.
In an unusual move for our family, we planned a summer vacation months in advance of actually taking it.
Typically, our summer trips are last-minute decisions with frenzied booking and packing of a clown car until it’s overstuffed and the kids are forced to hold their breath for 6 hours while wedged between piles of crap in the backseats.
This is not entirely our fault. As the kidlets move into semi-adulthood, their summer schedules have become increasingly unpredictable, making it hard to look at those few weeks in July and August and know with confidence when it will be possible for all 4 of us to be free for travel.
Still, we rolled the dice back in January and booked 4 nights in August on the Île de Ré, even being so brazen as to pay a non-refundable deposit. Despite the usual chaos of our summer weeks, we managed to sneak away for a few days of riding bikes around the island and sitting on the beach for extended periods. (I’ll write more on this soon.)
There was only a touch of rain and mostly moderate temperatures. Just warm enough to make sitting on the beach feel pleasant and not like we were potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil being baked alive in an oven.
Which was sort of what the rest of the country felt like.
The summer of 2023 was the fourth hottest summer since 1900 in France, according to Christophe Béchu, Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion. The Minister noted that the national average temperature over the past three months has been 1.4 degrees above the seasonal normal, according to Le Figaro.
Of course, heat records have been falling around the globe this summer, so France isn’t alone in that respect. Still, the heat has still managed to shock sensibilities.
By late August, towns across Southern France were experiencing 42 degrees Celsius (108F). One town, Puy-Saint-Martin recorded a toasty 43.5C as Météo France placed almost one-third of the nation on red alert for heatwaves. (Or canicule, a miserable word that also happens to be fun to say.)
As the South roasted, the North experienced vicious thunderstorms in August. This was part of unusually high rainfall in many regions across the summer. The apocalypse can’t make up its mind!
To make matters even more confusing, the massive rains in some areas and boiling temperatures in others left many regions short on water, causing local officials to place tough restrictions on water use.
The best may yet be to come. And by best, I mean insufferable. The Weather Channel is predicting a heat wave for this coming week that could make September one of the hottest ever for France.
As if to emphasize the desert-like conditions slowly gaining ground in France, the ever-helpful fates will actually cause sand storms from the Sahara to float across the sea and blanket much of France. Last year, these created fun, Dune-themed memes across social media.
So, at least the end of the times will make for some good GIFs.
Pests
Temperatures weren’t the only fun aspect of climate change. Authorities also blamed planetary warming for a rise in tick-borne diseases. Say hello to Lyme borreliosis, tick-borne encephalitis, and Crimean-Congo fever. Oh my!
France’s health department recorded 71 cases of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) between May 2021 and May 2023, including 61 that originated in France. These were primarily found in Auvergne-Rhône Alpes and the Haute-Savoie departments.
News of the outbreak caused the normally restrained British press to freak out.
While us city folk may have been feeling a bit left out of the tick hysteria, we eventually got our own insect party courtesy of “disease-ridden tiger mosquitoes,” as the UK Telegraph so calmly put it. “The insect – which carries diseases including dengue, chikungunya and West Nile fever – is gaining a foothold across France as the climate changes,” the newspaper helpfully added.
To deal with it, local officials decided to douse neighborhoods with chemicals:
Health authorities have fumigated Paris for the first time amid concerns that disease-ridden tiger mosquitoes could spread dengue in the French capital.
Stay-at-home alerts were issued and roads closed during the early hours of Thursday and Friday in two of the city’s suburbs, as pest control units sprayed insecticide across potential mosquito-breeding sites – such as trees, green spaces and stagnant water.
Wine
In other fun news, the nation’s wine industry continues to experience a nasty pandemic-related hangover. So much so that the government is going to pay winemakers $215 million to sell off surplus wine stocks and shrink their vineyards, according to Forbes.
One climate-related silver lining is that apocalyptic weather patterns have been good for champagne:
According to David Chatillon, president of the Champagne producers' union, this year's harvest promises to be "an absolute record in terms of volume," with grape bunches weighing-in at an all-time high of around 220 grammes.
This, in comparison with the previous record harvest in 2005, where bunches weighed 175 grammes, according to RFI.
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq