Tagules, fires, abnormally hot seas, very violent thunderstorms … During their 2022 holidays, citizens, scientists and politicians attended several events for the most part linked to climate change. But difficult to know if this period will lastingly mark consciences.
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He arrived by surprise, as a bad omen. On August 2, the presence of a beluga, 4 meters long, was reported in Eure. Fantomatic, white shadow in troubled water, it slowly goes up the Seine, before being blocked at the Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne lock, a hundred kilometers from Paris. What is this marine mammal doing, which belongs to the polar world, so far from the waters of the Arctic circle? Was he disoriented, by entering the waters of northern Europe, by offshore wind turbines? Did the modification of sea currents, linked to global warming, caused its rout? Or this cetacean, renowned for his intelligence, has just been too curious and, like the little goat of the tale of Alphonse Daudet, paid his dream of freedom from his life?
Dozens of experts tried to understand, in vain. Some immediately excluded global warming as a cause of this solitary wandering while others assured, on the contrary, that it was a serious hypothesis.
What does it matter. In the collective imagination, this disturbing appearance was seen as a symbol, a warning. The demonstration, diffuse and disturbing, that something had been de withly. “It was as if we had found a goldfish in a field,” notes Karima (the people whose only first name appears wanted to remain anonymous), 54, social worker in the Paris region, who followed with emotion the Attempts to rescue the cetacean, ultimately euthanized. “This story hurt me,” she continues. I told myself that something was no longer round. “
Something is no longer round, indeed. And this summer, it was seen and felt, everywhere in France. Corsica, Thursday, August 18, found itself swept away by thunderstorms of incredible violence with winds of 200 km/h, which left five dead. “In five minutes, it was hell,” said Sagone vacationers (Corse-du-Sud), describing an “apocalyptic” show. The state of natural disaster has been decreed.
Since the beginning of the week, thunderstorms and torrential rains have built up the country. In the Old Port of Marseille, the sea has overflowed, flooding adjacent streets, as well as two tunnels. In Hyères, in the Var, the rain was followed by hailstones in the size of a ball.
“It is before our eyes”
But it is with the heat that it all started. These scorching waves that followed one another, exhausting. Temperature records have been recorded in Nantes (39.1 ° C), Bordeaux (40 ° C), Biarritz (42.9 ° C) or Toulouse (35 ° C), where the temperature did not drop for more twenty days. The drought, the most intense that France has known since the middle of the 20th e century, affected almost all of the territory. And the storms of the last days will do nothing, as the floors are dry, impenetrable.
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