22.10.2024

The warmest year in Germany: 2023

Building design

2023, Germany, Global warming

2023 was the warmest year ever measured in Germany Credit: pixabay

We have been talking about global warming for decades. But 2023 has made it even clearer why this is so important. As a new record year with warm and humid conditions, 2023 shows the urgency of climate adaptation.

The German Weather Service (DWD) has published data showing that 2023 was the warmest year in Germany since measurements began in 1881. New temperature records show that climate change is continuing unabated in this country too. This makes it all the more important to step up climate protection efforts and implement measures to adapt to extreme weather conditions. This also applies globally, because according to the EU climate service Copernicus, international measurement data also points to record temperatures for 2023.

While previous years were often mainly dry and hot, 2023 will be characterized by warm and humid conditions with high levels of precipitation. It is therefore also one of the wettest years in history.

The DWD named 10.6 degrees Celsius as the average temperature for 2023. This figure is 2.4 degrees above the internationally valid reference period from 1961 to 1990. The current, warmer reference period from 1991 to 2020 is 9.3 degrees Celsius, which is still an increase of 1.3 degrees. The mild start to 2023 and the absence of winter already indicated that it could be the warmest year on record.

June 2023 was the fifth warmest on record. This was followed by record high temperatures in the first half of July 2023. In Möhrendorf-Kleinseebach in central Franconia, 38.8 degrees were measured. This was the nationwide record for 2023, and a summer aftershock in September further contributed to the increase in average temperatures. Ultimately, September 2023 was the warmest September since weather records began in 1881, and hot days followed in October too.

The number of sunny days was slightly higher than usual. June and September 2022 in particular were very sunny. Overall, the duration of sunshine exceeded its target by almost 15 percent compared to 1961-1990. Compared to 1991 to 2020, it was still 5 percent. 1,764 hours of sunshine were recorded on average across Germany in the warmest year. In the south and near the coast, over 2,000 hours were recorded in some areas.
By the way: The German Weather Service publishes a current climate status every month.

Precipitation values were also so high in the warmest year of 2023 that records were set. At around 958 liters per square meter, more than 20 percent more precipitation fell in Germany than in the reference period from 1961 to 1990. And even compared to 1991 to 2020, the amount was around 20 percent above the target of 791 liters per square meter. With the exception of February, May, June and September, all months of 2023 recorded a precipitation surplus.

November was the second wettest since 1881 with precipitation totalling over 2,000 liters per square meter in some places, for example in the Alps and the Black Forest. The highest daily precipitation was near Bad Berneck in the Fichtelgebirge, where 120 liters of water per square meter fell during a storm on 22 June 2023. In parts of northern Germany, the year 2023 ended with major floods.

2023 was the warmest year on record, but not an exception. There were already record temperatures in Germany in 2022 and the average temperature of 10.5 degrees was only slightly below the following year. 2018 is also one of the warmest years since weather records began. The record values for 2023 could already be predicted at the end of November because the fall was so warm.

The year 2023 shows that it is not always a strong summer heat that raises average temperatures. Rather, the weather between April and August was quite average. However, because the fall and winter months were so much warmer than usual, a heat record was set. Among other things, this had a negative impact on the harvest in many federal states. In combination with the heavy rainfall in 2023, this shows that climate change poses a serious threat in Germany with consequences such as high temperatures, flooding and droughts.

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service also sees 2023 as the warmest year since records began in 1940. According to the institute, global average temperatures last year were 1.46 degrees above the pre-industrial reference period from 1850 to 1900. This negative record emerged early on and was clear by November 2023 at the latest. However, the hot months of June and August as well as peak values in October already showed that 2023 would bring the warmest temperatures on record.

The United Nations also described 2023 as probably the warmest year since industrialization. They explained that global temperatures at the end of October 2023 were already around 1.4 degrees above the pre-industrial average. In 2016, the hottest year globally to date, temperatures were 1.6 degrees above the average for the years 1850 to 1900.

Scientists expect even higher temperatures in 2024. To avert global warming and the catastrophic consequences of climate change, the global community agreed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. This provides for global warming to be limited to well below 2 degrees, preferably even 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. However, the United Nations is currently forecasting dangerous warming of 2.5 to 2.9 degrees by 2100.

In our June 2023 issue, we looked at what heat does to the city. The magazine is available here in the store!

25.12.2024

Exhibitions

For a differentiated approach to the portfolio

Building design

General

Architects usually try to create finished houses, i.e. coherent works of architectural art for eternity. But does this claim stand up to reality? Should that even be the claim? Inspired by references from architectural history, art and anthropology, the young Stuttgart-based studio Kaiser Shen has developed various theses and tested them on the basis of its own projects. From […]

21.11.2024

Tens of millions for the unloved barn

Building design

General

The Museum der Moderne will be expensive. Very expensive. But what is scandalous is not that the budget was approved. But how it was approved. Here is the opinion of architecture critic Falk Jaeger.

Herzog & de Meuron’s Museum der Moderne has been criticized from all sides for years: it is far too expensive, the design is not appealing and the visual axis between the National Gallery and the Philharmonie is being obstructed. Now the budget committee of the German Bundestag has approved the cost plan for the project. How can it be that politicians are ignoring all the facts and public objections and approving the exorbitant cost plan for a new museum, while the other buildings of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation have long been in need of renovation?

Visualizations: Herzog & de Meuron

Rarely has a public building project in Germany provoked so much headwind as the Museum der Moderne. A shitstorm, you could almost say, if the contributions to the discussion were not of a serious nature. “The most expensive crusty bread in the world”, was the headline in the FAZ, referring to a metaphor used by jury chairman Arno Lederer. “This barn is a scandal” was the headline of another FAZ article, a scathing all-round attack that scandalized the location, architecture, size, environmental aspects and costs in equal measure.

Some points of criticism even overshoot the mark. The castigation of the sacrilegious proposal to block the line of sight from Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie to Scharoun’s Philharmonie (nicely illustrated by Stefan Braunfels in another polemic) is an all too superficial, silly stop-the-thief argument. Of course, a new building in this location would interrupt the view, but Scharoun had already planned it that way in terms of urban development, and Mies had to assume this in his planning.

Why would the view be so indispensable? If you want to see the Philharmonie, you can just step outside the door. In the beginning, when the Tiergarten was still free of trees due to the war, you could even see the Brandenburg Gate from the Neue Nationalgalerie, so what the heck.

The Tagesspiegel described the situation as “eyes closed and through”, and was right: the budget committee of the German Bundestag approved another hefty gulp from the taxpayers’ purse for the Museum der Moderne, thereby imposing a voluntary commitment for future increases in building costs from 364.2 million to a forecast 450 million euros. It certainly won’t stay at that, it’s more likely to be 600 million. But then the project will be under construction and there will be no turning back.

Dependence on private donors

The real scandal is how the Minister of State for Culture, Monika Grütters (CDU), has pushed through her personal “Grand Projet” against the most diverse reservations in the backrooms of politics. The political caste is making up its own mind about the project. Facts, pragmatic considerations and public opinion play no role. Perhaps the highly controversial architecture of the Museum der Moderne (“barn”, “ALDI discount store” etc.) would not have been a sufficient reason for a rejection, after all it was the result of a competition with a prominent jury. However, the urban planning problems, the reduction in the floor plan with the consequence of the expensive, difficult-to-calculate lowering into the extremely problematic Berlin building ground, should have given the housekeepers food for thought.

It is also annoying to see the submissive dependence on some private donors who had threatened to move their collections elsewhere. This is due to the fact that the foundation can hardly organize its own major projects, internationally attractive exhibitions, and is dependent on partners who are willing to pay.

Too many building sites

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is constantly being “gifted” new, magnificent museums by the federal government, which then have to be used and maintained. However, there are already decades of renovation backlogs at the existing houses. In addition, there is inadequate funding for qualified specialist staff and a pitiful acquisition budget of 1.6 million for all museums. None of this fits together.

The Foundation should finally be consolidating. Instead, the Humboldt Forum in the palace replica is to be brought back on track in 2020, the general renovations of the Pergamon Museum, the New National Gallery and Scharoun’s State Library are devouring huge sums of money and so on…

It’s no wonder that Berlin looks longingly at the popular major exhibition events in Paris, London, Amsterdam and New York. We want to play in that league too, we want to have something like that here again.