Climate researchers in the oldest mountain observatory in the world warn of drought
Created: 07/20/2022, 08:28
By: Cornelia Schramm
The drought is also increasing in Germany.
© Julian Stratenschulte/dpa
Climate researchers in the world's oldest mountain observatory on the Hoher Peißenberg are concerned about the drastic rise in temperature and its consequences.
Hohenpeissenberg - If you want to know how dry Bavaria is at the weather station on the Hohenpeissenberg, you don't need any of your state-of-the-art measuring devices.
Then Wolfgang Steinbrecht, ozone physicist, or Stefan Schwarz, weather service manager, go out into the climate garden and look into a simple bucket made of stainless steel.
There hasn't been any water in it for four weeks.
That's a problem: the forest fire risk is currently at its highest level.
"Our forests are mostly made of spruce, so all you have to do is think of fire and it's on fire," warns Schwarz.
Climatologists concerned: annual mean temperature has risen by almost three degrees since 1990
The bucket with sieve and funnel is old school, explains Schwarz, 49, and sinks it back into the ground.
Then he climbs the step up into the air-conditioning hut and reads the thermometer.
"Just over 25 degrees.
For us meteorologists, this is just such a summer day, because summer only starts at 25 degrees. "And his colleague Steinbrecht, 59, says: "We are not dealing with a heat wave in Bavaria, around 30 degrees simply means only summer.” But the long-term development is certainly worrying: Before 1990 the annual mean temperature was 6 degrees, today it is 8.6.
Of course, the experts no longer have to read the weather data from the thermometer.
There are highly sensitive measuring devices and evaluations by computers.
But when the approximately 60 employees of the weather station in the climate garden collect data, it has a long tradition - their workplace at 977 meters is the oldest mountain observatory in the world.
The heat is followed by the storm: complete with supercells and the danger of tornadoes.
Oldest mountain observatory in the world founded by monks
It is thanks to monks that researchers today can access the almost 250-year and thus longest series of measurements of weather data.
In the nearby Rottenbuch monastery, clergymen began recording the weather as early as 1781.
Schwarz says: "The monks used to measure the temperature at 7.30 a.m., 2.30 p.m. and 9 p.m.." This is the so-called Mannheim hour, a standardized procedure of the Mannheim Societas Meteorologica Palatina.
After secularization, former convent members, pastors and village teachers continued to take measurements.
First on the tower of the pilgrimage church of the Assumption next door, then in a weather station.
The Nazis later expanded it into a flight and radar observation post.
It has been operated by the German Weather Service since 1952 - in addition to the research observatory on the Hohen Peißenberg, there is only one more in Lindenberg near Berlin.
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For the climate researchers here in the district of Weilheim-Schongau, it's no longer just about the weather.
Scientists like Steinbrecht are primarily interested in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
Using machines that constantly suck in air on the radar tower, they can collect, analyze and compare samples closely.
Aerosols, trace gases, ozone and nitrogen oxides are fed directly into two chemical laboratories via long hoses.
"We are developing new observation methods for the radar association and exchange information with other stations internationally." And in addition to the longest series of measurements, the location has another advantage: "The values are not falsified by a large city nearby, here there is the purest mountain air - if air can be pure.”
Exhaust gas scandal, volcanic ash and corona: nothing escapes the experts
Steinbrecht has already filtered all sorts of things out of the air: "Because of the nitrogen oxides, we suspected something was wrong even before the exhaust gas scandal in the automotive industry." The high-tech devices also captured volcanic ash before the world heard about the eruption of the Hunga Tonga -Hunga Ha'apai spoke in the Pacific.
“Our pressure wave meters even measured the vibration.
A wave came from the right and one from the left rolled over the globe.” And during the first corona lockdown, the experts registered with their soot monitor that the air in Bavaria was much cleaner.
Nothing escapes the climate researchers on the Hohen Peißenberg.
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