The mayor of Fécamp, David Roussel, said that in 2022 alone the authorities noted 60 incidents of lesser importance but which testify to a deep concern in the region which is the result of changes in the climate which induce capricious weather.
For several years, in Normandy, hot and dry summers have followed one another, they have often been followed by periods of heavy rain and then periods of frost between -5°C and -10°C. This freezing allowed the water that had seeped into the rock to swell and create increasingly large cracks.
Apart from these fairly localized meteorological events, there is the phenomenon of sea level rise which contributes to the retreat of the coastline and not only in Normandy. On the Atlantic coast, the town of Soulac-sur-Mer has faced the most significant coastal erosion in France with a decline of around 2.5 m per year, which endangers many buildings.
Coastal erosion is a problem that the French authorities take particularly seriously because, if the phenomenon is known, it is evolving much more quickly than expected and the main culprit remains the same: climate change.
