Climate crisis and no end in sight. The German Weather Service shows how global warming has turned life upside down in this country in 2022. And what else is rolling towards the Federal Republic.
One day after the urgent warnings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the second hammer comes in terms of climate, this time from the leading weather experts in Germany. “We are driving Germany and our society out of the comfort zone of climate change,” said Andreas Becker, head of climate monitoring at the German Weather Service (DWD). The balance for 2022, which he and his colleagues presented on Tuesday, is unmistakable: It will not only be uncomfortable, but life-threatening – extreme weather and natural hazards as a result of climate change are no longer an abstract risk.
While 2021 was primarily about the devastating heavy rain and the deadly flood disaster on the Ahr, the most recent evaluation by the meteorologists is dominated by two findings: it was far too warm and far too dry. Accordingly, the average annual temperature of 10.52 degrees in 2022 clearly broke the previous all-time record. It was more than a degree warmer than the previous record in 2018 and 2.3 degrees warmer than the multi-year mean. It is now the twelfth year in a row that it has been too warm in the Federal Republic.
Record wildfires, record drought and record meltdown
In combination with the driest summer since 1961, a medium-sized catastrophe was brewing: almost 4,300 hectares of forest burned – an area the size of more than 6,000 football pitches. The fire brigade association Germany spoke of a “record forest fire summer”, which also endangered residential areas.
Due to the persistent drought, German farmers had to shoulder more than 25 million euros in crop failures – especially for potatoes, sugar beets and corn; the favorite vegetables and the most important feedstuffs in the Federal Republic. In many municipalities, drinking water had to be regulated, and in some cases even rationed. Sections of the Rhine, the most important transport route for inland waterway transport, were hardly navigable.
According to the Robert Koch Institute, the high temperatures cost thousands of lives. A total of around 4,500 people died between the Alps and the coast as a result of the heat waves, which recurred again and again from May to October. And the heat also spelled the end for one of the country’s remaining glaciers: the record melt left the southern Schneeferner in the Bavarian Alps as so-called “dead ice”. Four glaciers remain, but they are also melting rapidly.
Faster hotter than anywhere else
The forecast of the DWD does not give the all-clear. In many regions of Germany it will become even hotter and drier, both in the short and long term. The summer months of June to August 2023 are expected to be significantly warmer than in the years 1991 to 2020, especially in the south-east. In the next four years, the DWD expects that this trend will very likely continue throughout the Federal Republic.
Because global warming is progressing faster here than the global average. If the global temperature has risen by 1.15 degrees since pre-industrial times, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced on Monday, the temperature increase in Germany is already 1.7 degrees.
“It is now highly unlikely that we will be able to meet the global 1.5 degree target of the Paris climate agreement. Even the 2 degree target is now seriously endangered,” said DWD expert Becker. A scenario in the direction of three degrees is more realistic – a monumental deterioration in view of the possible consequences for living conditions worldwide. Nevertheless, one should not give up in the face of this prediction.
“One cannot emphasize enough how important it is to prevent every additional tenth of a degree,” appealed Becker. Every euro that is now invested in climate protection saves many times over in future damage management.
Alarming risk of heavy rain and a bright spot
This should also apply to high water and flood risks. “Heavy rain and continuous rain are already among the most common weather phenomena in Germany, which will continue to increase with ongoing climate change,” explained Tobias Fuchs, Head of the Climate and Environment division.
Heavy rain in particular would probably become more frequent and more intense – in view of the devastating consequences of the Ahr flood, this was an important reason for the DWD to launch a new risk calculation program. This combines the data from weather radars and measuring stations on the ground in order to improve preventive disaster control.
