Weather: new records for mildness broken for New Year's Day

Europe 1 with AFP 6:31 p.m., January 2, 2023

The years follow one another and resemble each other on the meteorological level: after an end to 2022 marked by an unusual mildness, 2023 begins in the same vein with several heat records broken in various French and European cities.

According to Météo France, on New Year's Day, the national thermal indicator (an average of 30 stations spread over the metropolitan territory) stood at 13.3 degrees, or +7.6 degrees compared to normal (period 1991-2020).

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Such an anomaly over one day is very rare, but there has been an "upward trend in recent years", underlines the national meteorological forecasting institute.

Thus a deviation of 7 degrees or more from normal has only appeared 25 times in the last 30 years, including 6 times in 2022 alone.

Fourth hottest day for the period

This January 1, 2023 was the fourth hottest day since 1947 over the period from December 15 to January 15, underlines Christine Berne, forecaster at Météo France.

"We are almost tied with the 3rd, which was barely a year ago, December 30, 2021, and December 31, 2022 comes in 2nd position" and was the hottest New Year's Eve ever recorded, with a average of 14.05 degrees or +8.4 degrees of anomaly, she adds.

Locally, many records were broken on Sunday: 24 degrees in Dax, 23 degrees in Biscarosse... Cities located further north-east also experienced their hottest temperature since 1918, such as Besançon (18.6 degrees), or 1945, like Dijon (16.8 degrees).

These unusual temperatures are due to a disturbance loaded with oceanic gentleness and humidity to which was added this weekend a southerly wind which brought more heat.

Almost 19 degrees in Warsaw, a record

A phenomenon that affects a large part of Europe: Warsaw thus smashed its previous heat record for the period on January 1, with 18.9 degrees (compared to 13.8 degrees in 1993).

And a city like Vaduz, whose January averages hover around 0 degrees, has seen the mercury hit 20 degrees.

This mild trend should continue at least until January 10-11, with temperatures 3 to 4 degrees above normal, says Christine Berne.

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2022 was the hottest year on record in France, as well as in Spain and the UK.

"We are really struggling to get out of these hot periods. We are in an endless circle, and this is a clear illustration of global warming", concludes the forecaster.