Giovanni Bricconi

Today it has finally rained, it was a long time since it didn’t happen. Just some minutes, not so much, some thunders, but it is good it finally happened. Some weeks ago I have got a letter from the local water supply company: it is now forbidden to irrigate gardens and grasses. You can irrigate just orchards and vegetable gardens.

My grass is all dead and many plants started dying, it is really a pity seeing all the garden becoming yellow and brown. Mine is not that big, I give water just to strawberries, my 2 cherry trees, and the olive.

It is summer, it is always a bit like this, the strange thing was that also during the spring I had to start irrigating the garden. I feel this very strange: I come from a rainy place, and giving water in winter or spring is really weird for me. This is the reason I started reading more about climate change: it is real, and I can see it clearly in my backyard.

I have found this site: Observation météorologique historiques France (SYNOP). It gives many data about the weather in France, where I live. I did not play much with it online, I just dared download the full historical archive with the plan of playing a bit with it later.

It has been a mistake, as the file is huge and my time is little, and I don’t have at home the right tools. In the end I just checked the nearest place next to my home and extracted the data of 2022, 2017, and 2012. A couple of awk and grep commands to get Nice data, and I imported all in open office, no funny tools like spark, jupyter or R (but maybe one day…). Some weird numbers here and there (did a cat go to drink in the tool that measures rain? -0.1 mm rain I don’t understand how it is possible).

This is the result, just a pivot table in open office.

I do not know how the yellow line will become during the rest of the year, but you see the difference in autumn and in April is something that made me wow.

Let me know if it is the same next to you…or if it is the opposite: it would be good to discover a place where to go when the south of France will become an arid desert.

The last time I have written about climate change was about Miami (FL): a name known everywhere in the world but still 12 hours and a half away from home. Some time ago I was watching TV news, and they were speaking about Normandy, which is just 1’000 Km from here; non yet in my barn house but much closer compared to Miami.

I have always heard of Normandy because of the second world war, the Omaha beach landing, and tourism. Living in France, Normandy is often presented as a beautiful place to visit, with many small villages and beautiful views. For instance the Mont-Saint-Michel

Just search for “mont-saint-michel rechauffement climatique” (mont-saint-michel climate warming) and you will find various articles telling that the streams around the village will be modified and the shores eroded. For instance Erosion en Bretagne : la baie du Mont-Saint-Michel au bord de la submersion ? and Changement climatique : menace sur la baie du Mont-Saint-Michel tell that the tide will increase, and this is not negligible.

Searching a bit more I have found a map on En Normandie, 428 communes menacées par la montée des eaux: it makes reference to an official publication from Insee (french national institute of statistics). The risk of flooding within 100 years concerns 122’000 inhabitants and may dangerous industrial plants, for instance nuclear reactors.

In 2021 a new law has been established: majors will have to maintain 30 years and 100 years of horizon plans showing which places will be impacted in their villages. In 30 years zone, it will be forbidden to make new buildings. It will be possible to build in the 100 years zone, but the community will be able to oblige their destruction in case of increased danger. You can read this article: Bretagne. 41 communes vont devoir s’adapter à l’érosion. The list of impacted villages is published on this official site Décret n° 2022-750 du 29 avril 2022

The same holds also for another region, Brittany, just close to Normandy. This page on the prefecture site has many links about it Adaptation des territoires aux évolutions du littoral.

The idea that you buy one house next to the sea and somebody then declares that it will be flooded within 30 years, or that you will be asked to destroy it is quite frightening. 30 years is a long period but not that long in the end. Everybody should contribute to limiting these changes, in the end everybody will suffer somehow, not just Miami’s or Normandy’s inhabitants.