Top 20 sunniest cities
Where to find good weather for sure in France? If you’re lacking in light or your tan is a bit pale, here are the cities that have the most hours and days of sunshine per year.
Has the weather forecast for 2050 already come true? What could the weather forecast look like in 2050? In partnership with the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization, a simulation was carried out on the occasion of the COP 20, in 2014, and disseminated by Météo France. Studies since then have hardly changed 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 km2, the annual number of hours of sunshine there is very variable according to the latitude, the relief and the nature of the winds. An inhabitant of Marseille thus benefits from 7:50 a.m. soleil daily, while in Saint-Brieuc, he will have to be content with 4:17 soleil per day. In general, the further south you descend, the more the sun makes large appearances.
Marseille is thus the most spoiled city, with an average of 2,858 hours of sun 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 fromanticyclone of the Azores which goes up, and of mistral particularly effective in chasing clouds. The ranking still reveals some surprises, with La Rochelle arriving far ahead of Biarritz where clouds from the Atlantic tend to accumulate over the Pyrenees.
More and more hours of sun
Sunshine is taken into account when the sky is completely clear and produces radiation strong enough to cause a drop shadow. Measured by a heliograph at photovoltaic cells, it 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 historical 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 if this trend will be part of the duration or not.
