At least the students should be happy: the summer holidays in Bavaria have just begun and the weather is enticing people to go swimming. The heat wave of the coming days can be endured well there. Anyone who has to work, possibly even outside, is more likely to sigh. From the middle of the week, meteorologists expect temperatures of 30 to 35 degrees again for Bavaria. The German Weather Service (DWD) speaks of a “new significant heat wave”. The maximum daily temperatures on Thursday and Friday are expected to be well above the 30 degree mark. And – to the delight of the 1.6 million students – there is no end in sight to the hot summer.
For the meteorologist Jürgen Schmidt, managing director of Wetterkontor, this summer is a clear sign of climate change. This was shown, among other things, by the weather data for Bamberg in Upper Franconia and Mühldorf am Inn in Upper Bavaria. “You can see that five of the past seven months were warm to significantly too warm in Mühldorf. And very dry,” says Schmidt. Only April was too cool, March was average. But all of this followed an “extremely warm winter”. And this year is no exception: in previous years too many months have been too dry. “There is simply no precipitation and there were too many months that were clearly too warm. That is a strong indication of climate change,” says the meteorologist.
By the beginning of August, the Mühldorfer weather data recorded 46 summer days with temperatures of more than 25 degrees and nine so-called hot days with more than 30 degrees. Bamberg has 50 summer days and 16 hot days. That is more than in the past two years, but not quite as many as in the record years 2018 and 2019.
But haven’t there always been very hot summers? Schmidt doesn’t let this argument from the skeptical corner unsettle him: “Summers used to be hot, of course, but constant records, these extreme temperatures well over 35 and close to 40 degrees, this extent and the duration of heat waves, That points to climate change.” The same applies to the increasing number of mild winters, which is likely to become a problem for Bavaria’s ski areas.
grapes wither
The ongoing drought is already presenting farmers, winegrowers and ship captains with challenges. From Bamberg to Aschaffenburg, the vines should sprout lush green along the Main. Instead, the young sticks are dry branches, some of which already have yellow and withered leaves. The grapes wither because the stick pushes them off for their own survival. Winemakers have to cut them out to relieve the canes. “The vineyards have already suffered from the drought of the last few months, so we had to help with artificial irrigation,” says Artur Steinmann, President of the Franconian Winegrowers’ Association. While the young vines are in a bad way due to the persistent heat, some of the older ones go into so-called emergency ripening, whereby the last reserves for the premature ripening of the grapes are mobilized. Steinmann does not want to be tied down to numbers, but it will no longer be a good year. Even if enough rain were to fall from now on, there could at most be an “average harvest”.
Bavarian farmers have long since said goodbye to top yields. The wheat was under heat stress during the flowering period. The result: “Shrink grains and thus lower harvest yields and loss of quality,” says Anton Huber, advisor for grain and oilseeds at the farmers’ association. Northern Bavaria is particularly affected. Clouds cling to the Alps in the south, and it rains a little more often than in the north. But the wheat harvest for the whole of Bavaria is ten to 15 percent below the annual average. “Even some of the corn has already suffered massive drought damage,” says Huber. This particularly affects the farmers who are dependent on animal feed.
Drought and low water were also a problem for shipping in Bavaria, especially between Vilshofen and Straubing where the Danube flows freely. With the water level, the loading capacity of the ships decreases, some of which only carry a quarter of their cargo. Inland shipping is prepared to “be challenged more, but federal waterways need more political support for that,” says Andreas Löffert, managing director of the port of Straubing.
The state should help
Winegrowers, farmers and shipping companies see politicians as having a clear responsibility in the face of climate change. Löffert demands from the federal government that dams are discussed again to compensate for low water. Shipping must be subsidized by the state if there are additional costs due to low water levels. Winegrower Steinmann calls for storage tanks for the vines to ensure irrigation even in dry periods when winegrowers are no longer allowed to take water from the Main. The farmers’ association expects immediate aid and structural changes. Farmers should not face the risks of drought and heat damage on their own. The association published a corresponding position paper on Tuesday.
“For the challenges posed by drought and heat, there is an urgent need for a strategy and practical measures to secure land management, especially in northern Bavaria,” the paper says. The association calls for more research on drought-resistant plants, innovation in crops and cultivation methods, environmentally friendly irrigation systems and more sustainable water management. In addition, farmers should use the online feed exchange and provide each other with areas for cultivating catch crops. In this way, losses of income could be mitigated.
Farmer Huber does not dare to make a harvest forecast. This “is as uncertain as the weather forecast is.” Some areas could still compensate for the damage with sufficient rainfall. But fifteen liters of rain in between wasn’t enough, “if the next heat comes right away.”
To keep the city’s trees from drying out, Nuremberg is taking a special approach: the city’s indoor swimming pools were closed at the beginning of July to save energy. Instead of throwing away the water, the municipal company Nürnberg Bad and the service company Public Space Nuremberg pumped water from the basins into tankers and are now using it to water 9,500 trees. Three out of four indoor pools in Nuremberg have been temporarily closed since the beginning of July. The chlorine in the pool water has degraded enough to not harm the trees, a statement said. The campaign runs until mid-August, and whether the water from other pools can also be used is currently being checked.
It would certainly be more sustainable if this test had a positive result. Because the meteorologists do not assume that the temperatures will fall so quickly. Like his colleagues from the DWD, Schmidt believes that the summer will remain hot, will drag on for a few more weeks and that August and September will probably also be too warm and dry. An offshoot of the Azores High is likely to push over from the Atlantic and continue to lead to dry summer weather.