Extreme Heat Risk 2050 (France, DRIAS)

Source: DRIAS (Météo-France) TRACC2023 Year: 2050 Category: Physical risks · Mitigating services · Climate Acute Risks Coverage: Country (France) Format: Raster grid Used in risk analysis: No (contextual layer; not used in materiality scoring)

What it shows

This is a forward-looking scenario layer for France. It measures how often very hot days are projected to occur around the 2050 horizon, helping anticipate where heat will most threaten health, agriculture, energy systems and infrastructure.

How it is built

The layer reports the projected number of days per year with a maximum temperature reaching or exceeding 35 degrees Celsius. It is based on the French DRIAS TRACC2023 climate projection for the ~2050 horizon, at a +2°C global warming level (which corresponds to roughly +2.7°C over France). As a single-model scenario projection, it should be read as a plausible future trajectory rather than an observation. The highest values fall in the Rhône valley, Provence and Languedoc.

How to read it

Higher counts mean more extreme-heat days per year are projected, indicating greater exposure to heat-related health risks, agricultural stress, cooling-energy demand and infrastructure degradation. Lower counts indicate fewer such days.

Class thresholds

The underlying layer models a physical flux: the projected number of days per year with a maximum temperature reaching or exceeding 35 °C (days/year), from the DRIAS TRACC2023 projection for the ~2050 horizon at a +2 °C global warming level. It is a continuous raster, not a five-class product: the colour ramp runs over the range 0 to 20 days/year rather than along fixed risk bins, so there are no class breakpoints — higher values simply mean more extreme-heat days.

This layer is contextual and is not used in materiality scoring. The configuration does define a single screening cut-off of ≥ 10 days/year with Tx ≥ 35 °C to mark a high-heatwave-risk zone.

How these thresholds were set. The day-count quantity comes directly from the DRIAS TRACC2023 projection; there is no published class scheme to follow. The single 10 days/year cut-off is a Darwin in-house screening threshold (a round-number cut on the modelled day count), not a DRIAS or WWF standard.

Reference: DRIAS – Les futurs du climat — drias-climat.fr.

Source

DRIAS – Les futurs du climat (TRACC2023 experiment) — https://www.drias-climat.fr.

Comparison with the WWF Risk Filter Suite

The WWF Risk Filter Suite publishes present-day, global indicators only. This is a France-specific, forward-looking 2050 projection of extreme-heat risk, so it has no distinct equivalent in the WWF methodology. It serves as a national, scenario-based complement to WWF's present-day extreme-heat indicator (S3_5).

Legend

Symbolised field: Days with Tx ≥ 35°C (days/year)

Generated from darwin/layers/layer-extreme-heat-risk-2050-france-drias.toml and risk_indicator_pairs.toml (develop).