As of: March 16, 2024, 6:29 a.m
By: Lennart Schwenck
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Is our summer getting hotter every year?
A new study shows that the cause lies in a natural phenomenon.
Namely in the Arctic North Atlantic.
Frankfurt – Heavy, continuous rain, mild temperatures, cold winds – few things bother Germans more than unpleasant summer days.
However, a new study by the European Geoscience Union comes to the conclusion that the coming summers in this country will be significantly better.
However, the good news has a bitter catch.
Because the cause of summery days in the coming months is climate change.
Be it the African cocoa producers of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, the bleaching corals of the Great Barrier Reef or the northern German coasts: climate change is now noticeable everywhere.
The diabolized CO2 emissions of industrialized countries are causing a chain reaction of global events, commonly known as the greenhouse effect.
This could bring warm summer temperatures to Europe, and thus also Germany.
However, the cause lies in much more northern regions.
Arctic ice: How cold water currents influence European weather © Imago Images
The role of freshwater anomalies in the North Atlantic
According to the study European summer weather linked to North Atlantic freshwater anomalies in preceding years, there is a connection between Arctic ice loss and more extreme weather events in mid-latitudes.
A potential link exists across the ocean, as loss of sea ice and glacial ice leads to increased freshwater inflows into the North Atlantic.
These freshwater anomalies could have a crucial impact on European summer weather.
Arctic sea ice is warming twice as fast as the global average, resulting in a dramatic loss of sea ice volume.
Similar large losses are also observed in land ice, particularly on the Greenland ice, which leads to an increased release of fresh water into the North Atlantic.
Previous studies have found statistical links between increased sea ice loss at high latitudes and an increase in extreme weather events at midlatitudes.
However, the exact mechanisms behind these connections are not yet fully understood, according to the study.
Link between freshwater anomalies and European summer weather
Freshwater anomalies in the North Atlantic could trigger a deterministic, irreversible sequence of events that leads to cold anomalies and storms in the winter and heat waves and droughts in the following summer.
However, the exact role of freshwater anomalies in initiating this process is unclear and requires further study.
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asked the German Weather Service (DWD), Kristina Fröhlich added: “Currently, the operational centers, like the DWD, do not have good forecast quality for the summer over Europe.
Intensive research is being carried out into ways to improve this, both in improving the models and in the statistical follow-up of the predictions.”
Fröhlich continues: “We cannot currently include the freshwater input from melting glaciers in our calculations, but melting sea ice makes a contribution.
There is also great uncertainty about how good the ocean models are in terms of describing salinity and density in the sea, also because of the short observation time series.”
Summers are getting hotter - but the study also has something positive
So the study has something positive: linking European summer weather to freshwater anomalies in the North Atlantic potentially offers new approaches to improving weather predictability.
Better detection and quantification of these anomalies in climate models could help improve the long-term forecasting ability of European summer weather.
Given the expected increase in freshwater anomalies in the coming decades, it is crucial to understand their potential as drivers of climate change and incorporate them into future prediction models.
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