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The intense but short heat wave that struck parts of Central Europe earlier this month created quite a bit of hysteria among some German activist climatologists and most of the media.

For example IPCC climatologist Mojib Latif attributed the heat and severe thunderstorms to global warming. Stefan Rahmstorf tried to hint this may be the case, but had to concede there was no real data to back it up.

DWD dismisses connection to climate warming

Now the DWD German Weather Service has made it’s opinion public on the matter. At his climate blog at online flagship daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, journalist Joachim Müller-Jung writes, “It does not suffice to attribute the heat records to climate change” and he quotes the official DWD spokesman Gerhard Lux:

It may suit our imaginative world of the consequences of climate warming, but we are sticking to the principle that you cannot craft a climate statistic from one singular extreme weather situation.”

We’ll remember that when the next storm or hurricane hits. Good to see that Germany’s national weather service, the DWD, is keeping its sanity and dismisses the link between singular extreme weather events and climate change.

Heat records show no climate trend

Müller-Jung then adds:

The hot ‘African air’ produced record temperatures exclusively in southern Germany, already in Hessen or North Rhine Westphalia [Central Germany] there was not a single heat record. From heat records, which happen every few years and thus are too seldom as a whole, it still is not possible to discern a climate trend.”

In northwest Germany where I live, the temperature did not even reach the 30°C mark. So the intense heat was not only short, but it was rather local/regional as well.

Lux does note, however, that the frequency of heavy rainfall events (more than 30 mm) has risen. (That may have more to do with decadal cycles).

When asked why journalists have the feeling storms are more frequent, Lux says it is because people are far better networked today and every storm gets instantly communicated everywhere.

In earlier times no one gave a rat’s ass about a storm way out in East Hicksville, except the Hicksvillers. By the time the dramatic Hicksville pictures reached the audience in other places, it was already old news. That’s not the case today.