fact finder
The last two weeks of July in Germany were cold and wet. Some use this fact to downplay climate change. But from the point of view of experts, this is wrong.
Despite showers, thunderstorms and heavy rain, July in Germany was “overall too warm” with an average temperature of 18.7 degrees Celsius German Weather Service (DWD). Because July was not only 1.8 degrees warmer than the older reference period from 1961 to 1990 defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), but also 0.4 degrees warmer than the currently valid warmer comparison period from 1991 to 2020 So far the hottest day of this year in Germany has been measured: on July 15th with 38.8 degrees in the Bavarian town of Möhrendorf-Kleinseebach.
For the online medium “NIUS”, however, the German weather in July represents a “discrepancy” with climate change. Reports say: “Rain and cold: ARD and ZDF are fueling climate panic so absurdly”. Accordingly, many media spread “fear and panic about climate change”, despite bad weather, according to the accusation. In another article, SPD politician Fritz Vahrenholt says the topic is being used “to scare people.” There is no climate catastrophe in sight.
Rainy July provides no statement on climate trends
However, according to Kevin Sieck from the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), temporary local weather phenomena are not suitable for making statements about climate change: “Robust statements about climate trends can only be made if you look at several decades,” says Sieck . “A rainy July in Germany does not allow any statement to be made about a long-term trend.” It is therefore the long-term developments that are relevant when assessing trends in the climate.
Karsten Schwanke, meteorologist and ARD-Weather moderator, like this: “There will always be very changeable summers.” But there is a clear trend towards warmer summers with larger upward swings. “We’re seeing a tendency for the heat waves to get longer. And we’re currently getting heat waves that we definitely didn’t see 50 years ago. We’re also getting more droughts, especially in summer.”
In addition, Germany only makes up about 0.7 percent of the earth’s surface. “No matter what our weather is like, we make the average across the globe and we’re seeing an extremely hot July around the world,” said the weather presenter. According to the European earth observation program Copernicus, last July was the warmest month worldwide since weather records began.
Weather and climate not the same
Weather and climate are two different things, says René Orth, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. “Weather is what we experienced in July. It can be cold, warm, wet, dry,” says Orth. “Climate is what happens over longer periods of time. If you average the weather over several years or ideally decades, then we see the climate.”
Considered individually, there was about 30 percent more precipitation in July than in the older reference period from 1961 to 1990 and about 15 percent more compared to 1991 to 2020, but it rained far too little in the two previous months. “If you were to draw conclusions about climate change from every month, you would have to draw a different conclusion almost every month,” says Orth.
statement to extreme weather events “completely wrong”
Climate change is not denied in the articles by “NIUS”, but doubts are sown as to how devastating global warming and its consequences actually are. “Scientist advises calm: ‘There is no climate catastrophe in sight!'” is the headline of one article. Said scientist is the former Hamburg Senator for the Environment Vahrenholt.
After the end of his political career, the chemist worked for various energy companies and has repeatedly attracted attention in the past with statements that relativize man-made climate change. So also in the interview for “NIUS”: “Globally it is the case that neither the forest fires nor the hurricanes nor other extreme weather events have increased. That says even the world climate report.”
The statement that all types of extreme weather events have not increased and that this has been confirmed by the world climate report is completely wrong, says Orth. There is clear evidence that, for example, heat waves or heavy rain events have become more frequent in many areas of the world, and this is also documented in the World Climate Report. Johann Jungclaus, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, also emphasizes that the core statements of the World Climate Report on extreme events should in no way be understood in the way Vahrenholt claims.
In the Sixth IPCC Working Group One Assessment Report It says: “Man-made climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in all regions of the world.” Since the last status report, there has been “stronger evidence for observed changes in extremes such as heat waves, heavy rainfall, droughts and tropical cyclones and, in particular, for their assignment to human influence.”
Sun does not cause global warming
Vahrenholt does not deny the anthropogenic influence of humans on climate change per se. However, he considers other factors such as the sun or a “warm phase of the Atlantic” to be just as important. He explains the influence of the sun on “NIUS” as follows: “The direct solar radiation on the earth has increased. And that puts the phenomenon of the greenhouse effect, which is upheld by climate scientists, at least in its place. It is not the reflection from the CO2 that has it much warming, but direct sunlight because the clouds have thinned.”
There is no question that the anthropogenic, i.e. CO2-driven, greenhouse effect has been proven, writes the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) on request. “Indeed, clouds have become somewhat more/less transparent, presumably due to cleaner air, but also due to interactions with the ocean on decadal scales.” However, the cloud height has increased due to the CO2 greenhouse effect, which increases the greenhouse effect of the clouds.
“The sun cannot be the cause of global warming, because its luminosity has been decreasing slightly for about 50 years – while the strongest temperature increase was measured during this period,” says the Climate paper of the German Climate Consortium.
Fluctuations in the Atlantic do not decisive
Vahrenholt’s statement that global warming is also due to a warm phase in the Atlantic, which will level off again in the next few years, is too brief. Vahrenholt appeals a studypublished by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research and the Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen and Bjerknes Center for Climate Research.
Jungclaus is one of them. He says: “In the Atlantic there is indeed a multi-decadal timescale quasi-periodic variation that we call the ‘Atlantic Multidecadal Variability’.” It is correct that this is currently in a relatively warm phase, but contrary to what Vahrenholt claims, these fluctuations only have a small influence on the global mean temperature.
“If we go into a negative phase of Atlantic multidecadal variability over the next few decades, that would result in only a very small slowdown in global warming,” says Jungclaus. “We would very likely see regional effects from this, such as slightly cooler temperatures in the North Atlantic.” However, it will very likely never be as cold as in the Atlantic cold phase in the 1970s – the new “cold phase” will probably be much warmer than the “warm phase” of the 1940s.
Vahrenholt is not a proven climate expert
Jungclaus believes that Vahrenholt deliberately interprets the study differently and is a typical example of his agenda. “The point is not to deny man-made climate change, but to put it into perspective by asserting other influences than greenhouse gases.” The message should be that there is no reason to take action to protect the climate now. In addition, facts would be twisted as it happened.
Albert Denk, sociologist and research associate at the Freie Universität Berlin, criticizes that “NIUS” uses dubious expertise, for example through Vahrenholt. Vahrenholt builds up a narrative that the population is being deceived by elites, Denk says: “Sometimes it’s the federal government that would completely erroneously ‘govern right down to the boiler room’ or the climate scientists* who would have to ‘jump up and give the all-clear’, because the global climate science consensus is not correct.”
“false balance”
Orth also makes it clear that Vahrenholt is a chemist and not a climate scientist and therefore not an expert in the field of climate research. In terms of expertise, that would be comparable to an ophthalmologist providing expertise on a broken leg. Orth believes it is “misleading” that media portals such as “NIUS” disseminate positions that do not correspond to those of science. Because this could give the impression that these individual opinions, which deviate from the majority of climate researchers, are held similarly often – in this context there is often talk of “false balance”.
“These are media that make themselves available for right-wing currents because they most likely see an economic model there,” says Schwanke. He understood that many people were afraid that they would have to change their lives to protect the climate and therefore followed this attitude of denial. It is therefore a major challenge for politicians to take the masses with them.
“NIUS” wanted to contact the ARD fact finder does not comment on the subject, but published an article on it. Vahrenholt did not respond to the request.