Climate change and its consequences
When was your hot birthday? Climate calculator calculates daily temperature rise
Germany has experienced seven warmest years since temperature measurements began in the last decade. 2018 was the warmest year on record, with air temperature rising 2.3°C compared to the average for the years 1961 to 1990. The change does not happen gradually across generations, but can be clearly felt over a lifetime.
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Editorial Network Germany (RND) Climate Calculator shows the rapid development during our lifetime. This allows you to determine the average air temperature in Germany on your birthday and deviate from the average temperature for the years 1961 to 1990.
Temperature calculator: when was it warmest?
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For example, anyone born on the 28th of April has had exceptionally warm birthdays in recent years. While the average temperature on this date in the years 1960 to 1990 was 7.8 degrees, it has averaged 11.1 degrees over the past 20 years. This corresponds to an increase of 3.3 degrees. In odd years like 2012, the temperature on April 28 was more than 10 degrees above the previous level. This means that April 28 is one of the ten days with the strongest temperature rise.
The three days with the hottest temperature rise are all in January. However, this does not mean that the first month of the year in Germany is the hardest hit by global warming, because January also includes some of the coldest days recently.
However, the bottom line is that warming also prevails in January, with the entire month getting an average of 1.5 degrees warmer over the past two decades. Only April and July had higher values. The month in which the lowest temperature was recorded was October – 0.6 degrees.
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However, this does not automatically mean that the worst affected months will continue to warm up more in the future. It is also conceivable that the strong upward rash occurred recently by chance or that the months in the comparable period from 1960 to 1990 were unusually cold, and thus a large deviation from temperatures at that time is now measured. Carsten Friedrich, a climate researcher for the German Weather Service, assumes that long-term global warming will be noticeable in the winter months.
The number of measuring stations is declining
The fact that data collection changes frequently over time also distorts results in the short term. In 1960, for example, the German Meteorological Service was still operating at about 550 measuring stations in Germany. The average daily value results from the average value of these stations, from Zugspitze to Fehmarn.
In the ensuing decades, the number of stations gradually decreased to just under 500. If the stations now closed are in particularly warm or cold regions, the missing measured value has a similar effect on the average value.
Germany is heating up faster than the world
Even more difficult to compare with the years 1961 to 1990 is the comparison with the pre-industrial period. Climate researchers use the years 1850 to 1900 for this. During this time, there were only as many as 50 measuring stations in Germany.
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However, temperatures at the time were crucial to international conventions. At the 2015 World Climate Conference, for example, those in power endorsed the Paris Agreement and agreed to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times.
In 2021, the global average temperature was already 1.1°C above the pre-industrial level. Globally, the hottest year so far was 2016 – with an average global temperature of about 1.27 degrees above the level at the time.
Different parts of the world are affected to varying degrees by global warming. For example, warming in the Arctic is expected to be three times higher than the global average. Europe, and with it Germany, is warming faster than the global average.
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