Fires, drought: how weather reports are adapting to climate change

Faced with the drought situation, Météo-France (but not only) is innovating

Fires, drought: how weather reports are adapting to climate change

Faced with the drought situation, Météo-France (but not only) is innovating. As of June 1, the French institution specializing in weather forecasts will launch a "forest weather forecast". A new illustration of the growing adaptation of organizations and in particular Météo-France, in the face of climate change. And this, even though Spain is affected at the end of April by a heat wave of historic precocity.

This novelty is part of a context of climate change which has proved disastrous for French forests in 2022. Indeed, 60,000 hectares of forests have "gone up in smoke" throughout the year, recalls Christophe Béchu. Over the past few months, several organizations have changed their practice regarding their approach to the weather issue. Thus, since March 13, 2023, France Télévisions has ended its traditional weather report and opted for a "Journal of weather and climate".

Longer, these bulletins are now an opportunity for the public audiovisual group to highlight climate change very concretely thanks to the very visible presence of a temperature timeline illustrating the warming of the Earth over recent decades. France 2 and France 3 also put the very precise figure, determined and calculated by two researchers from Météo-France and CNRS, of the magnitude of "global warming induced by human activities". On Wednesday April 26, it was 1.19°C compared to the pre-industrial era.