After two years, 2022 and 2023, in 1st and 2nd place among the hottest years ever observed, this year 2024, which was humid and not very sunny, still came in 5th position of the hottest. If many of you are feeling gloomy and heatless weather in this year 2024, it is mainly due to the lack of sunshine and excess water.
2024: 5th hottest in France © The Weather Channel
Winter 2024: 3rd warmest
The meteorological winter of 2023-2024 was marked by great mildness, except for a winter period of a few days in mid-January. He climbs into 3? position of the mildest winters with an excess of +2°C.
Over the first half of February 2024, the deviation from normal temperatures reached +3.6°C across the country. This difference elevates the first half of February 2024 to the rank of the hottest since 1930, ahead of 2002 and 2020 with respective indicators of +3.5°C and +3.4°C.
Temperatures have largely exceeded seasonal norms, with variations regularly reaching between +4 and +5°C in the northern half of the country. This trend has also extended to Central Europe, where the thermal surplus has often exceeded +5°C. The notable phenomenon was the Foehn effect, illustrated by an impressive heat peak recorded in Licq-Athérey, in the Basque country, where the thermometer climbed to 27.2°C on February 15. Two monthly records were also broken, in Mendive (26.7°C) and Laruns (26.3°C). This unusual mildness, both in terms of its duration and its intensity, is the result of a repeated southerly flow, transporting a subtropical air mass from the Maghreb.
A spring with very fluctuating temperatures
Temperatures have often fluctuated during this spring of 2024 with early hot spells between March and early April with several early heat peaks. The first half of April was the hottest ever observed since 1900. Two national temperature records were even broken on April 6 with a minimum temperature of 22.5°C in Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). and a maximum temperature of 33.9°C in Navarrenx (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). A period of cold weather then set in in the second half of April with the return of frost and some damage to certain fruit trees. In May, temperature fluctuations were less marked.
Over the entire spring, we observed a temperature excess of +0.8°C which would place our spring 2024 in 6th position of the mildest springs.
2024: 5th hottest year © The Weather Channel
Summer 2024: heat down compared to the 2 previous summers
Over the entire summer of 2024, the excess temperature reached +0.7°C compared to the 1991-2020 normal, which places this summer in 12th place among the hottest summers since 1900. It is therefore a fairly hot summer but which arrives clearly after the last summers of 2023 and 2022, placed respectively in 4th and 2nd position of the hottest summers. hot. We have become accustomed to the last few hot summers, which gave us the feeling of a summer that did not live up to our expectations…
A mild autumn, but without excess
Across France, temperatures in autumn 2024 were +0.8°C higher than the normal calculated over the period 1991-2020. It is far behind the autumn of 2023 which was the warmest observed since 1900 with an excess of +2.5°C.
Global warming in action
There is no doubt that global warming is accelerating since the 5 hottest years in France occurred after 2017. Another observation, for the year 2024, 11 out of 12 months recorded a national average temperature above normal . Only the month of September shows a slight heat deficit of -0.4°C. The month with the largest excess temperatures was February with +3.6°C!
