The hottest spring since records began in Germany

Impact of climate change

02. June 2024 5:34 p.m. Robert Klatt

Temperatures in spring 2024 were the highest in Germany since measurements began. According to the German Weather Service (DWD), this shows that climate change can no longer be ignored.

Offenbach am Main (Germany). Global average temperatures are rising steadily due to climate change and long, intense heatwaves are becoming more frequent, which a Monash University study says kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. This not only concerns hot countries like India, where a new temperature record of 52.3 degrees Celsius was recently recorded, but also Germany, where older people in particular are worried about high temperatures.

THE German Meteorological Service (DWD) has just released official temperature data for spring 2024, according to which it is the warmest since measurements began in 1881. In spring 2024, the national average temperature was 10.8 degrees Celsius, or 3.1 degrees Celsius above the internationally valid reference period from 1961 to 1990. The deviation from the warmer comparison period from 1991 to 2020 was 1.9 degrees Celsius.

Record temperatures in February and March

According to DWD data, February and March 2024 were the hottest since measurements began. In March 2024, the average temperature was 7.5 degrees Celsius, four degrees Celsius above the internationally valid reference period.

“Climate change cannot be ignored. After the hottest months of February and March this year, we are now experiencing an average spring temperature in Germany that has never been so high since measurements began.”

Added to the high temperatures are extreme precipitation due to thunderstorms in spring 2024, particularly in May. These caused floods in Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate. A study by the Technical University of Vienna (TU) also recently showed that floods and other extreme weather events will occur more frequently in Germany due to climate change. In contrast, in eastern Germany the weather was generally dry.