Climate Change Impacts in Germany

In this final blog post, we are going to be talking about Climate Change impacts on our earth, but primarily, those occurring in Germany. According to this Source, there are several major impacts attributed to climate change for Europe. Unfortunately, the impacts of climate change on Europe are much more diverse than those we face here in the United States. Impacts are spread across three categories, Physical systems, Biological systems, and Human and managed systems. Physical system impacts include very high impacts on glaciers and snow, and minor changes in rivers and lakes. Biological system impacts include medium changes in Terrestrial ecosystems, and high impacts on marine ecosystems. Finally, there will also be a minor contribution towards change in food production. There are also several key regional risks that Europe will be facing. Some of these include increased economic losses due to flooding as a result of increased urbanization, sea levels and peak river discharges. There will be increased water restrictions, and a reduction in water availability as a result of increased evaporative demand. There will also be increased economic losses as a result of extreme heat events and their impact on health, crops, air quality and wildfires.

Predictions in climate change throughout Europe have improved tremendously since climate models have improved in their ability to simulate the climate. Although these climate models have improved in their ability to simulate climates, the spread in their projections is much wider than we would hope, due to large natural variability throughout Europe. Despite this, evidence shows that model projections are strong enough for us to put our faith in, meaning that it is very likely that temperatures will keep rising throughout Europe, and it is also likely that winter temperatures will rise, especially in the north. We are also likely to see an increase in annual precipitation throughout northern and central Europe.

According to climate trends and projections, there will be changes in temperature and rainfall throughout Europe varying by region. This is one of many effects of climate change, next to distribution, phenology and abundance of varying wildlife, stagnating wheat fields, and forest decline. As climate changes, Europe will be more prone to systematic failures brought upon by extreme weather events, and economic activity will be impeded, especially in the Southern regions, which could lead to a greater disparity between regions. Some impacts, like the rising of sea levels will be able to be reduced by adaptation, but evidence shows that there are limits to how much we can adapt, imposed by physical, social and technological factors. Europe will be at higher risks for floods, transport will suffer due to hot and cold weather extremes, and energy production and transmission may decrease. In addition to these somewhat obvious impacts, there will also be less obvious results such as decreases in tourism, an increase in cereal yields in Northern Europe, and reduction in the value of wine products due to differing geographic distribution of grape varieties. Adaptation will help us overcome some of these difficulties, but there will be a cost to all adaptations, and there will be many unintended consequences of adaptation measures that will have to be analyzed as we develop a plan for fighting climate change.

In my opinion, the most interesting issue that will be brought upon by climate change is the impacts on food production systems. Although this might be an unpopular opinion, personally I have not placed much importance on the appearance of the earth and the preservation of natural aspects. What I am trying to say is that it is a lot more interesting for me to see how humans will be directly effected rather than endangered species and rising sea levels. One of the most significant changes that will effect us is the impacts on crop yields, as studies have shown that the impact by climate change has been largely negative rather than positive. For me, it is engaging to think about this issue because there are several advances being made to combat this. While we attempt to combat climate change by reducing our footprint on the earth, we may also devise agricultural techniques which are not dependent on local climates. The map below shows that regions with more extreme weather conditions and lower technological advancement will have much greater impacts to human well being and food production, for instance, Africa. There are regions of Africa which will have a very high impact on food production based on climate change, which I speculate is a result of their food production being largely dependent with climate.

Severe Weather in Germany

 In today's blog post, we are going to be discussing severe weather in Germany, specifically, the existence (or lack thereof) of hurricanes and tornadoes. We will also draw comparisons to the corresponding weather in the United States, and discuss how such severe weather forms.

Tornadoes are rapidly rotating narrow regions of low pressure, and they form in a process which takes several steps. First, a rotating body of air forms at the ground because of vertical wind sheer, then horizontal rotating air is lifted into the air by thunderstorm updrafts, and a Mesocyclone is fully developed in this updraft. In the United States, an overwhelming majority of tornadoes travel in a northeastern direction, Which is the same direction that the prevailing winds flow.

Tornadoes do occur in Germany regularly, as indicated on the map below of tornado occurrences. Although, they only experience an  average of 10 Tornadoes per year Source, which is much lower than the averages observed in the United States. With an 11 year sample, there is an average of around 500 Tornadoes observed in the US per year  of EF-1 Strength or higher.
 Source


 
As you can see, Germany falls in one of the hot spots of tornado activity, right in the heart of Europe.

Despite an observed rise in Tornado Occurrences over the past few years, there are several logical explanations for why there are not actually more tornadoes. Advances in radar technology have increased our rate of detection for tornadoes. In addition to this, the way we classify our tornadoes has become much more advanced, and what may have been written off as a single tornado in the past may now possible be identified as multiple tornadoes. Source

Now that we have discussed tornadoes, we will talk about Hurricanes, and investigate whether or not they occur in Germany.

There are three main requirements for hurricane formation, Consistent heating of the surface, High Humidities, and Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds. These three factors are mostly present in the area around the equator, the tropics, which Germany is quite far from. There are several hurricane formation regions, including hurricanes in the Atlantic and East Pacific, Cyclones in the Indian Ocean near Australia, and finally, Typhoons off the coast of China and Indonesia

In the United States, as seen in the illustration above, hurricanes typically travel from the Southeast to the Northwest. This is the case for several reasons, including the Coriolis effect and the Westerlies. They are also affected by the positioning of high pressure systems. Although it is not impossible for hurricanes to reach Germany, they do not fall in a main hurricane formation region and they do not experience very many hurricanes. On average, 17.7 hurricanes hit the United States each decade, across all categories. Source

Daily Weather in Germany

Today, I'm going to be talking about the daily weather in Germany, specifically, the weather in the capital city of Berlin. To discuss the daily weather, we will look at the forecast across three days, March 16th, 17th and 18th. March 16th has a forecasted low of 30 degrees, ranging to a high of 49 degrees with a 10% precipitation percentage. The 17th of March was slightly warmer with highs at 52 degrees and lows at 34, and a 0% precipitation percentage. Finally, on March 18th, the forecasted high is 49 degrees, and a low of 35 degrees, with once again, 10% precipitation. Over this three day period, the pressure dropped very slightly, but stayed around and average of 30.38in. Across these three days, the average wind speed remained constant at 10 mph.

Here is a map of Germany with information provided by satellite, radar, as well as weather stations.
 

 As you can see, Germany is mostly covered by a layer of low, warm clouds with only a small amount of cold clouds stretching from southern Germany to the Czech Republic. The radar shows us that at this time there is almost no precipitation throughout Germany, with only light precipitation occurring in the middle, and a few spread-out occurrences in the south, near Munich. A surface map of Germany allows us to learn information about the surface characteristics of the country. There are very few rivers throughout Germany, but there are quite a few lakes spread around. Light mountain ranges cover the center of the country, and there are much larger ones around the southern border. Many areas throughout the country are colored light green, indicating forested areas or parks.


 
You can see in the closer map of Germany, the isobar pressures observed range from 1036  to 1012, with a high pressure system right above Northeastern Germany, and another one a bit to the west. We can also see a cold front moving in from the northwest and a warm front moving the other direction near that. We know that air flows from high pressure systems to low pressure ones, so we should be able to see where the air will flow by looking at the larger map and identifying low pressure systems.

In this larger map of Europe, we see all of the same things from the previous map, but with surrounding conditions included as well. We see all the isobars between 1000-1032, and there are several more high pressure, and some low pressure systems on the map. We see four more high pressure systems, two far in the north east, and two far in the southeast. There are also 5 apparent low pressure systems, one directly south, and four in varying distances to the east.  In addition to the cold and warm fronts from the smaller map, we see warm, cold and occluded fronts to the south, alternating warm and cold fronts in the southeast, as well as the northeast.

Global and Local Winds in Germany

Located in the northern hemisphere, Germany has a minimum latitude of 47.27, and a maximum of 55.05, with a minimum Longitude of 5.87 and a maximum of 15.03. Global wind circulation is modeled to have three different "cells", the Hadley cell, the Ferrell Cell, and the Polar cell. Of these three, Germany lies in the Ferrell Cell, which lies at the latitudes between 30 and 60. The geographic location of Germany also means that it is right in the middle of the westerlies wind belt. This means that the prevailing winds blow from the west to the east and northeast. Germany is located near the polar front, which occurs around the 50-60th latitude degrees, which is not near the subtropical high or equatorial low belts, but is still a low pressure belt.

we know about Germany's location in relation to the Ferrell Cell, the Polar front, low pressure belt and westerlies. Based off of this, there are many predictions we can make about weather and climate conditions. The low pressure belt can bring showers, thunderstorms and heavy rain, which can be somewhat unpleasant. Because of its location in the Ferrell Cell, net air surface flow is rising towards the north pole, and causes wind to blow from the west, albeit more sporadically than trade winds. The flow of cold air to the north keeps most of northern Germany at a moderate, comfortable temperature.


There are many varieties of winds that are brought on by mountains, including Valley Breezes, Mountain Breezes, Katabatic winds, Foehn winds and the Santa Ana winds. Germany of course, has many mountains, with the highest ones lying in the state of Bavaria. There are the Alps, Bavarian Alps, Northern Limestone Alps and the Wetterstein mountains. As a result of these mountains, Germany does experience several of the above winds,  including the foehn wind, which is actually a word of German origin. Germany also often experiences valley and mountain breezes. Winds don't only come from the mountains however, as there are two types of breezes that may be experienced by countries that have coastlines; sea breezes, and land breezes. Germany has one coastline on the northern side, and can experience both land and see breezes throughout the year.