After a devastating summer 2022, a new "forest weather" will be broadcast every day by Météo-France from Friday, June 2. This weather is intended to alert the population to the risk of fires starting, in order to raise public awareness and prevent fire starts.

The first map broadcast Thursday evening in advance by TF1 shows a green France (which corresponds to a low risk), with the exception of a few departments in yellow (moderate risk) mainly grouped southwest of Paris – in the departments of Eure-et-Loir, Sarthe and Mayenne...

This new map presents at the departmental level the degree of risk by a color code ranging from green to red (very high) through yellow and orange (high).

The launch of this new forest weather, scheduled for June 1, was postponed by one day to coincide with a visit by Emmanuel Macron to the civil security in the Gard intended more broadly to "prepare for the summer" with the actors in charge of firefighting.

The French president must go to the air base of the civil security of Nîmes-Garons to "exchange with all the actors mobilized on the ground to prepare the summer of 2023", according to the Elysee. It is a question of "ensuring that the decisions taken [in the autumn] are well implemented on the ground in order to protect the French," said a presidential adviser.

>> Read also: Global warming: was the summer of 2022 really a click for the French?

A number of hectares burned already higher than in 2022 before the summer

The "forest weather" will be published every day at 17 p.m. during the summer period, at least until the end of September, and available on the meteofrance.com website and the Météo-France mobile application. It will be done alongside the weather of the beaches or the marine weather.

This type of card is already present in other countries such as Canada, the United States, Spain or Greece.

Europe has been hit by record fires in 2022. In France, the summer marked by megafires in Gironde and the 72,000 hectares gone up in smoke during the year – six times more than the average of recent years – accelerated the collective awareness of the issues related to global warming.

According to the Élysée, this year on May 21, the number of hectares burned was already 21,000, against 15,000 ha in 2022 at the same time.

"90% of fires are of human origin and more than half come from stupid gestures: cigarette butts, barbecues, grinders," recently recalled the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu.

>> Read also: Carbon emissions, ozone pollution... How wildfires are choking the planet

The hotter and drier it is, the more vegetation can catch fire, and the more the fire can spread. Global warming exacerbates these risks. Temperatures above 30°C, combined with air humidity below 30% and wind speeds over 30 km/h, are often cited by professionals as the most likely to cause fires to start and spread rapidly.

The "forest weather" is established by Météo-France "from observations and forecasts of several meteorological parameters (temperature, rain, wind strength, air humidity) and the state of drought of vegetation".

With AFP

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