‘In 2014, This French Weather Presenter Announced the Forecast for August 18, 2050’

On June 15 2022, a viral tweet a sobering claim — that a 2014 French weather forecast “for 2050” wound up matching the real-life French weather forecast in June 2022:

Alongside a standard weather forecast screen capture, text of the tweet read:

In 2014, this French weather presenter announced the forecast for August 18, 2050 as part of a campaign to alert to the reality of climate change. Now her forecast that day is the actual forecast for the coming 4 or 5 days, in mid-June 2022.

On the weather map, text read: “Demain après-midi, 18 Août 2050,” or “tomorrow afternoon, 18 April 2050.” Temperatures on the map ranged from 28C to 43C, 83F to 109F.

Searches for the original program led to a number of articles from 2019, when the image circulated previously. One was titled “The reason this five-year-old weather video is going viral,” explaining that the illustrative future forecast had, as of 2019, begun veering uncomfortably close to reality:

A five-year-old fictitious weather report speculating on temperatures more than three decades in the future [in 2019] resurfaced after social media realised the report has predicted the climate 31 years too soon.

The fake report was created in 2014 when French weather reporter Évelyne Dhéliat teamed up with the World Meteorological Organization to create a bulletin imagining how climate change would affect temperatures in 2050.

Five years later [in 2019], a weather report by Ms Dhéliat showed almost identical temperatures to the fake report.

This side-by-side comparison shows the fictional report next to a true report from June 2019 — which wasn’t the hottest day in France so far this summer [2019].

Given the original broadcast year of 2014, reverse image search by “oldest” returned a number of dead links. Sorting by most recent in June 2022 returned a number of crawled versions from that month, such as a post to r/Damnthatsinteresting on June 16 2022:

The tweet from June 2022 referenced contemporaneous weather reports about temperatures in the region shown on the 2014 map. On June 17 2022, the UK’s Independent reported that the map appeared to be aligning with the weekend’s forecast:

French weather presenter, Évelyne Dhéliat, predicted in 2014 that temperatures would reach up to 43C [109.4F] in August due to global warning.

However, the country is set to see happen this weekend [June 17 to 19 2022], 28 years earlier than predicted and in the typically cooler month of June.

France is experiencing a profound heatwave and has just observed it’s [sic] earliest recording of 40C weather in history, with cities such as Nantes and Tours set to reach highs of 43C on Saturday [June 18 2022].

In Paris, Saturday [June 18 2022] could become the hottest June [2022] day yet with forecasters predicting highs between 38 and 39C, which would break the French capital’s previous June heat record set in 1947.

A June 15 2022 tweet claimed that a fictional 2050 “forecast” aired on French television as a climate change warning unsettlingly aligned with the forecast in France for June 17 to 19 2022, just eight years later. On the 2014 map, a temperature of 43C (a little over 109F) was prognosticated; temperatures of 43C were forecasted by meteorologists for French cities on June 18 2022.