The overlapping crises lead to paradoxical feelings in many people. On the one hand, given the gas shortage, many are hoping for a mild winter. On the other hand, that would be another sign of ongoing climate change.

Because so far the year 2022 in Germany has been extraordinarily warm. On average, the Measuring Stations recorded a temperature increase of 2.4 degrees Celsius compared to the long-term average. The measurements in Berlin-Tempelhof, shown as an example in the graphic below, represent a nationwide trend.

Enter a zip code or a location in the search and display the deviations in your region.

In the course of 2022, temperatures in Germany were generally above the long-term average. When it did get cooler, that was more of an exception: after many midsummer weeks, the second half of September abruptly heralded autumn, and the exceptionally warm October was followed by the first crisply cold days in mid-November.

Temperature increases between 1.2 and 3.3 degrees

Viewed over the year as a whole, all measuring stations in Germany have recorded an increase in temperature: the deviation ranges from 1.2 to 3.3 degrees Celsius.

The best way to explore the regional differences is to pull the slider above the map of Germany a little to the right and only display the places with a particularly large deviation. With a limit of three degrees, for example, only 17 of 274 stations remain on the Germany map.

The south is heating up faster than the north

Their geographical distribution is striking: With the exception of Magdeburg, all are in southern Germany. In Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland, the temperature anomaly was particularly common at around three degrees.

If you pull the controller to the left, for example to 1.5 degrees (according to the Paris climate agreement, global warming is to be limited to this value), 99 percent of the German Measuring Stations are already above this. One of the few exceptions is Mittenwald-Buckelwiesen in Bavaria at 1,000 meters above sea level with an increase of 1.3 degrees.

However, an altitude does not help to escape from climate change. One of the three warmest measuring stations with increases of 3.2 degrees is Birx in Thuringia on the border to Hesse and Bavaria, at an altitude of 747 meters in the Rhön.

The warming is currently lowest near the coast, because the seas heat up much more slowly than the land masses. On the other hand, residents there are exposed to the threat of rising sea levels, among other things.

Since the German measuring stations are almost all on land, it is not surprising that Germany is warming up faster than the global average. The global comparative value of meanwhile slightly more than one degree of global warming also takes into account temperature measurements over the oceans. But even in comparison with other countries, Germany is above average.

It doesn’t matter where you measure: the speed of temperature rise has increased significantly over the past 50 years. Since the 1970s, every decade in Germany has been warmer than the previous one.

2018 was the warmest year on record, with air temperatures rising by 2.3 degrees compared to the average for the years 1961 to 1990. The five warmest years in Germany since 1881 have all occurred after the year 2000.