France: top 20 sunniest cities

France top 20 sunniest cities

Where to find good weather for sure in France? If you lack light or your tan is a little pale, here are the cities with the most hours and days of sunshine in the year.

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[EN VIDÉO] Have the weather forecasts for 2050 already come true?
What could the weather report look like in 2050? In partnership with the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization, a simulation was carried out on the occasion of COP 20, in 2014, and disseminated by Météo France. Studies since then have made little change in the predictions. In July 2019, France experienced its second heat wave. Absolute record in Paris on July 25 and absolute record in the metropolis at the end of June 2019 with 46°C. Never seen !

Metropolitan France may well be a territory of barely 643,800 km2the annual number of hours of sunshine is very variable depending on the latitude, the relief and the nature of the winds. An inhabitant of Marseille thus takes advantage of 7 h 50 of Sun daily, whereas in Saint-Brieuc, he will have to content himself with 4 h 17 Sun per day. In general, the further south you go, the more the sun makes large appearances.

Marseille is thus the most spoiled city, with an average of 2,858 sun hours and 170 sunny days per year, ahead of Toulon (2,839 hours), Ajaccio (2,756 hours) and Nice (2,724 hours). The city benefits in particular from the Azores anticyclone, which is rising, and from the mistral particularly effective in removing clouds. The ranking still reveals some surprises, with La Rochelle arriving far ahead of Biarritz where the clouds coming from the Atlantic tend to accumulate over the Pyrenees.

More and more hours of sunshine

Sunshine is taken into account when the sky is completely clear and produces radiation strong enough to cause a cast shadow. Measured by a heliograph at photovoltaic cellsit must be greater than or equal to 120 watts per square meter.

For several years, there has been a trend towards an increase in the number of hours of sunshine. In 2017, Marseille broke the historic record for France with 3,111 hours of sunshine recorded over the year, ahead of Nice (3,047 hours) and Sari-Solenzara, in Corsica (3,036 hours). But it is impossible to know whether this trend will follow the duration or not.

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