My Diaries

Read on MEDAD (French Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Planning and Development) website.
(I’ll pass the details, and please forgive my poor English since the translation is very technical and I didn’t spend too much time on it):

Our State Minister Jean-Louis BORLOO visited last August Météo France National Center for Research in Meteorology in Toulouse, and participated into a workshop about last summer’s climate conditions, and on the climate change question. Here below are some summarizing elements from the meeting, as presented by the Ministry :

• “observation data show an average global warming of 0.75°C in the last 100 years; in France, the average warming reaches 1°C on the last century and accelerates in the last 30 years; in its last technical report published early 2007, the IPCC declares that global change is henceforth unequivocal and most of the observed temperature raise in the second half of 20th century is very probably due to the increase in anthropic greenhouse gases (average CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has risen 30% since the beginning of industrial era);

• this global warming is going to go on in the next decades; simulations made for the IPCC research show that the average planet temperature could warm up from 1.1°C o 6.4°C in 2100 (compared to observed values during period 1980-1999); the rhythm for these evolutions tightly depends on greenhouse gases emissions development hypothesis for the next decades; mitigating greenhouse gases emissions must then be a national priority as well as a european and international one;

• at a national level simulations show that France should keep warming up with an increase in winter precipitations, especially in the Northern half, and a decrease in summer, and a strengthening of specific extreme happenings: increase in intense winter rain, longer and more intense heat waves and summer droughts; as to now, there still hasn’t been any recent increase in the number of storms or torrential rain episodes in the Southeast of France;

• France’s particularly mediocre summer of 2007 doesn’t question these elements; first because there will still be climate variability, with important variations from one year to another, second because this situation only concerns a North-Western fringe of Europe, whereas the Southeast of Europe has been through a very severe drought until July and two exceptional canicule episodes (45.5°C in Bari, Italy, at the end of June then again in July, above 40°C in Athens, 39°C in Bucharest);

• beyond engaged greenhouse gases emission mitigation actions it is absolutely required to get prepared to the climate change consequences: adaptation to extreme phenomena (canicule, flooding…) through public action in prevention and risk management, water management with a probable increase in Southern droughts, public planning policies… those are indeed the tasks on which the whole team of French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Planning and Development has been working.”