FRANCE has experienced its hottest year since records began, the country’s national weather service said on Wednesday.

This comes as temperatures across the globe continue to soar to dangerous levels.

Extreme weather has devastated communities across the globe this year, including sweltering heat and drought conditions across Europe. 

France saw temperatures surge repeatedly in successive heat waves from May and into October, accompanied by extreme events like wildfires in areas like north-western Brittany.

“[This year] 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. 

It estimated the average temperature for the year as a whole would be between 14.2 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 per cent lower than normal, with rain in July 85 per cent below average. The driest year in France was 1989, which saw a 25 per cent 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. 

In October an international team of climate scientists found that human-caused climate change made the drought across the northern hemisphere at least 20 times more likely, and warned that such extreme dry periods will become increasingly common with global heating. 

The United Nations says that globally each of the last eight years is likely to be hotter than any recorded year prior to 2015.