Another Warm Winter in Munich: Cause for Celebration or Concern?
City life . Climate Change
The new year in Munich was welcomed with a lovely sunny day and a high of 16°C. When getting ready in the morning of New Year’s Eve, I pondered over my long sleeved winter shirts and ultimately dug to the back of my closet for a t-shirt to wear under my sweater in case my day in the city ended up calling for some cooler clothing. The weather seemed abnormally warm to me for this time of year, but considering I would obviously be somewhat biased through my experiences in Canada, I consulted with some of my friends. Alec Zaiane, who was visiting me from my home city in Canada, texted me a few days later that it was “definitely warmer than [he] expected (and warmer than what seems to be normal)”. However River Harper, an exchange student from Georgia, USA commented that he is “not convinced that the weather has been warm, because coming from the [American] south, [the temperature in Munich] has been a big adjustment” from the winter warmth he’s used to.
I became interested in how people were feeling about this weather and kept asking around. The results among my exchange student friends were consistent: the further away from the equator they lived before, the more likely they were to describe the weather as too warm for winter. I wanted to get some opinions from local people and ambushed my family with questions about weather over the holidays. While Gisela Kortendiek, my grandmother, was happy that she could go to the grocery store without her thick winter coat again, my younger cousin Tim told me at Christmas dinner that he was disappointed that the snow had come and gone so quickly. My aunt had no strong feelings about the weather, and my uncle voiced his disappointment at how the lack of snow was impacting his plans to go skiing.
Looking at the weather patterns in Munich across recent history, one thing is clear: this winter is too warm. Winter of 2022/23 has already hit record setting temperatures, with the New York Times reporting that the temperature in Munich on New Year’s Eve was the “highest ever measured on that date”(NYT). According to a press release by Deutscher Wetterdienst, winters in Germany have been trending in a warmer direction for a while with the winter of 2021/22 being described as “the eleventh in a series of excessively warm winters”(DWD). The average temperature last winter was 3.1 degrees celsius higher than the figure for 1961-1990 (DWD). This increase may not seem like a big change, but even small increases to the global temperature can cause climate change related weather disasters to increase on a global scale. Many people like my friends and I appear to be happy with this warmer winter trend, especially in a year where heating costs have increased dramatically following the invasion of Ukraine and subsequent war with Russia. The warmer temperature is making the lower settings on the heaters much more bearable as we try to save energy. Some businesses are also benefiting from the warm sunny weather by opening their beer gardens, such as the beer garden at the Chinesischer Turm in the English Garden, according to a quote from Sven T. who was interviewed by Merkur on January 9th, 2023. Sven T. indicates that the people of Munich are happy to start the new year under the open sky with their first mass beer in the beer gardens that have already reopened.
However, not everyone is having such a positive experience of the warmer temperatures. My uncle is not the only disappointed would-be skier who can no longer hit the slopes due to the warmth. As per the article “Bayerische Skigebiete müssen zur Hochsaison Schliessen: Wetter-Prognose für Wintersportler vernichtend” by TZ, double digit plus temperatures, warm winds, sun and rain are detrimental to the snow conditions in major ski areas and are hitting the mountains right at the height of the usual ski season (TZ). Ski resorts will face the difficult financial choice of whether or not to reopen after the warm temperatures pass because the expenses of replenishing the slopes with artificial snow may wind up more costly than the financial gain brought on by winter athletes. Winter tourism is not the only thing to suffer, according to The Local de., which mentions that an “early return from hibernation”(The Local DE) for local animals could be triggered by the warm temperatures which will be damaging to them if the temperatures drop again beyond the spring temperatures the animals are adapted to. For more information on how climate change affects winter wildlife, see the article by The Nature Conservancy listed below.
Whether one is looking at the warm winter temperatures with delight or distress, one thing is clear: warmer winters seem to be here to stay. Dr. Friederike Otto says these new record breaking heats are “made more likely to happen by human-caused climate change”(NYT), and “will become increasingly common and severe”(NYT) as long as greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current levels. This is a belief held by many climate experts, and is also of concern among my exchange student friends. Alec Zaiane elaborated that he suspects there will be “some sort of adverse effects on the ecosystem”, though he isn’t sure exactly what those effects are. Ashley Tisdale, an exchange student from BC, Canada, is concerned about the warm weather because “it’s worrying to see large areas of land that should be covered in snow completely green”. She comments on the trend of extreme weather in recent years and states that it makes her “anxious about how resilient our infrastructure and ecosystems can be heading into the future”. River Harper, for one, feels that the “silver lining of it being warmer than average is that there isn’t any ice anymore, because [he] was always slipping in December”. It seems that the warm winter will continue to inspire a wide range of opinions as the winters in Munich continue to warm up year after year.
Below are the links to all websites cited in this reportage. I suggest these sources as further reading for anyone interested in the warm winter temepratures in Germany and their impacts.
https://www.tz.de/bayern/skigebiete-saison-aus-wetter-prognose-wintersportler-news-mkr-92012326.html
https://www.thelocal.de/20230107/record-breaking-winter-temperatures-warm-europe