Living in Paris under 50°C? An immersive installation allows you to try the experience

What does 50°C feel like in the shade? We could reach this temperature several days in a row in Paris in 2050. A mobile climate chamber installed in a truck allows you to experience life in an extreme climate.

“I am worried, but ultimately, I am also reassured after this extreme experience, me in 2050, I thought we were all going to die”confides Léona, leaving the climatic chamber. This thirty-year-old director says she is sensitive to environmental concerns and believes she is part of a generation that has adopted more virtuous behavior.

“I don’t buy a lot of clothes anymore, and when I do, it’s second hand”explains the young woman. Léona lives in Paris in the 6^e arrondissement, a very urban neighborhood. “Things are changing, for example, in my street I see people going down with their compost bins, that’s good”she punctuates.

The installation consists of immersing yourself in “the climate of the future” and takes place in three stages: feeling, understanding and finally taking action. This experience was created by explorer and researcher Christian Clot, who intends to push everyone to action.

“The 50°C that we could have in Paris is something that no one has yet experienced and the idea was to be able to bring them to life,” explain Christian Clout at the origin of the Climati Sense project. An immersive experience that immerses the visitor in a climate chamber at 50°C for around thirty minutes.

“I conceptualized this project because in our studies, we saw that to help people change something in their lives, you needed feeling and unfortunately, the climate of the future is difficult to have already experienced it , even if we have heatwaves, floods which are starting to make people aware”, explains the explorer-researcher who leads exploration and research expeditions around the world. “My work focuses more specifically on the human capacity to adapt in the face of change and crises, by conducting studies in real situations”specifies the researcher.

The truck installed on rue Lobau, behind Paris City Hall attracts passers-by. Alain lends himself to the experiment. Installed inside, he says he passed this street by chance, but was very interested in the subject of climate change. “Finally it's okay, it's not too hot, I'm not sweating, however, I think I'm all red”he jokes.

Several stages await the volunteer guinea pigs who try the immersive experience. First, visitors spend ten minutes riding an exercise bike. Two friends have been walking briskly on the treadmill for five minutes. The discussion begins on the organization of the birthday of one of them. “Still a little hot”says one of them, after a moment.

Alain begins the second stage. He finishes his glass of water and approaches the objects placed on a table. He puts his hand on it and is surprised by the temperature of the object. “I didn't expect it”, he explains. “That’s when we understand that the temperature is really high”he continues.

The last ten minutes of immersion, in this 50°C universe, consist of completing a fairly simple logic test. “I clearly felt that my brain was working more slowly,” says Léona. “In fact, we are in slow mode, because we want to preserve our basic abilities: breathing, modulating the temperature of our body”analyzes the young woman.

Same feeling for Alain who does not observe “no real difficulty in answering the test”but concedes “read the questions several times”.

Signs are installed as soon as the truck exits, it offers 50 solutions to prevent temperatures in Paris from panicking. Léona is sensitive to solutions that can be taken on an individual scale. “This immersion is interesting, but what seems very important to me is that we have answers and ways to reduce our impacts”she said.

An objective assumed by Christian Clot. “The goal is not just to scare people by showing them how hard it is going to be, but to make them aware that even if, of course, the climate is going to warm up, we still have the capacity today to act”, he explains.

Installed until Thursday evening, this free immersive device allows you to experience around thirty minutes at 50°C, a temperature that Paris could experience in the middle of the century.