People pass by the first Paris 2024 official flagship store in Paris, France, Nov. 15, 2022. Photo: Xinhua

France in 2022 experienced the hottest year since records began, the country's national weather service said Wednesday, as global warming stokes temperatures globally. 

A cascade of extreme weather exacerbated by climate change devastated communities across the globe in 2022, including sweltering heat and drought across Europe that wilted crops, drove forest fires and saw major rivers shrink to a trickle.

France saw temperatures surge repeatedly in successive heat waves from May to October, accompanied by extreme events like wildfires in areas like northwestern Brittany, damaging marine heat waves in the Mediterranean.   

"2022 will be the hottest year recorded in France since measurements began - so since at least 1900 - that is a certainty," even if December is very cold, said Matthieu Sorel, a climatologist at Meteo France, in a briefing. 

It estimated the average temperature for 2022 as a whole would be between 14.2 C and 14.6 C depending on December temperatures. 

That is a significant increase from the previous record of 14.07 C seen in 2020, and the highest since records began in 1990.   

Annual rainfall is expected to be as much as 25 percent lower than normal, with precipitation in July 85 percent below average. The driest year in France was 1989, which saw a 25 percent rainfall deficit.

Eight months of drought in France is already the country's third longest dry spell on record, following 17 months in 1989 to 1990 and nine months in 2005.

Across Europe, exceptionally high summer temperatures led to the worst drought the continent has witnessed since the Middle Ages. 

Crops withered in European breadbaskets, as the historic dry spell drove record wildfire intensity and placed severe pressure on the continent's power grid. 

AFP