The qualitative effects of climate change on health in France

This report aims at giving a general basis for the possible effects of climate change within a context defined by data on possible climate change defined in collaboration with Meteo France. After a brief description of climate change in France, the authors describe the health consequences of different phenomena like: more frequent hotter days and nights and a lesser number of cold days and nights, heat waves and dryness, heavy precipitation events, increase of storm and hurricane activity, more frequent sea level rise. For each of these classes of consequences, they consider different more particular consequences, i.e. the increase of river and lake temperature and of sea surface temperature, increase of summer hours of sunshine, decrease of snow coverage duration, soft winters and early spring, decrease of frost, weak winds over longer periods, forest fire, decrease of river water level, decrease of ground waters, effects on microbial activities, floods, and so on. Then the author reports some observations made during the heat wave in France in 2003 (mortality, risk factors, interactions between temperature and air pollution, national planning) and in 2006