It was too warm in 2021

Created: 12/30/2021, 1:12 PM

The top of the exhibition tower is the only building on the Frankfurt skyline that protrudes from the rising sun.

© Boris Roessler / dpa

The ending year was the eleventh too warm year in a row, according to the annual balance sheet of the German Weather Service.

But 2021 also brought extraordinary extremes with catastrophic consequences.

Offenbach - With an average temperature of 9.1 degrees, 2021 was 0.9 degrees above the value of the internationally valid reference period 1961 to 1990.

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This made 2021 the eleventh year in a row that was too warm, as the German Weather Service (DWD) reported in its annual balance sheet.

According to the preliminary evaluation of the measuring stations, the weather year was overall quite average, but it also brought extraordinary extremes with catastrophic consequences.

This time, it was not heat waves or temperature records that shaped 2021, but extreme weather in the form of heavy rain.

Since 2001, the DWD has recorded heavy rain in its balance sheet as a separate category.

The year 2021 has the second most heavy rain events since this period.

Only in 2018 did heavy rain occur more frequently.

However, the consequences of the extreme weather were not as devastating as they were this year.

In the Ahr valley in Rhineland-Palatinate alone, 134 people were killed in the flood disaster in July, thousands of buildings and a large part of the infrastructure in the flood areas were destroyed.

dpa