2023-12-29 12:00:05
The Vinça reservoir, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, December 9, 2023. ED JONES/AFP
In the Pyrénées-Orientales, the year ends as it began: without rain. According to provisional data from Météo-France, the department experienced a record drought, even more severe than that of 2022 – a year which had already been the least wet in the history of records. This precipitation deficit is a strong characteristic of French Catalonia, where there were no more unusually high temperatures than in the rest of French territory.
“Across the entire department, the precipitation results are catastrophic, with stations which have often accumulated half, or even less, of normal levels”, specifies Tristan Amm, forecaster at Météo-France. In Perpignan, for example, the cumulative rainfall reached 250 millimeters (mm), or almost 20% less than the 2022 record, at 305 mm cumulative. “To give an idea of what this represents, you should know that the 1991-2020 average is 571 mm of accumulation per year in Perpignan, explains Mr. Amm. The city’s record rainfall saw a cumulative 222 mm in a single day, November 12, 1999. That’s almost as much in twenty-four hours as in the whole of the past year…
A “rail of depressions”
Even the exceptional rains of autumn did not benefit the Roussillon plain and the Aspres massif. “Between mid-October and mid-November, France was swept by an almost uninterrupted succession of rainy spells, favored by a “rail of depressions” over the near Atlantic. (…), explains Météo-France, in its provisional report. Never before have such quantities of rain been measured in thirty consecutive days across the country. Locally, the accumulations approached 900 mm in the Massif Central, 800 mm in the Vosges, 500 mm in Pas-de-Calais, 400 mm in Poitou-Charentes, while they did not exceed 25 mm in Perpignan. »
As of December 1, the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM) noted in its bulletin that the aquifer of the Roussillon plain was still “extremely degraded, with very low levels” and “charging does not seem[ait] not having started ». In any case, the coming year will also be marked by difficulties, in particular for the agricultural sector, dominated in the department by arboriculture and viticulture. “It seems difficult to sustainably reconstitute the Roussillon aquifer reserves by spring 2024”notes the BRGM.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Drought: in France, the water tables are starting to recharge
One of the questions raised by these two years of drought is that of the link with climate change – and therefore the possibility of seeing aridity become structural in the region. “Climate models have difficulty simulating what could happen in the future on scales as small as that of a departmentexplains Mr. Amm. But we have good reason to believe that warming will make more intense and longer droughts, but also episodes of extreme precipitation, more likely. » An oscillation between extremes which is already one of the climatic characteristics of the Mediterranean foothills of the Pyrenees.
You have 40% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#endless #drought #PyrénéesOrientales