How to describe last year’s record-breaking summer? Much too hot and much too dry. In 2018, northern and eastern Germany experienced the hottest summer ever, and across Germany it was, after the summer of 2003, the second-hottest summer since records began in 1881. The heat was accompanied by extreme drought in much of Germany. The result: arid fields, dried out trees and shrubs, overheated cities, a lack of oxygen in rivers and lakes, poor crop yields, and raging forest fires. But it wasn’t just Germany that experienced an extreme heat wave: Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Finland also experienced their hottest and driest summers on record as well. Due to the extreme droughts, forest fires broke out in Scandinavia, and the thermometer at the Arctic Circle climbed above 30°C. In early July, temperatures of 32°C were recorded in northern Siberia – 20 degrees higher than normal at this time of year.
The increased frequency of extreme meteorological events corresponds with the climate researchers’ prognoses from the past 20 years. By and large, scientists are in agreement: climate change will not only bring with it increased average temperatures, but also more frequent extreme weather events. “We expect these kinds of extreme periods to increase, along with all the consequences that entails for our society,” said Paul Becker, Vice President of the German Weather Service (DWD), at the beginning of September. According to the latest climate report for Lower Saxony, the number of hot summer days in northern Germany will more than double in the medium term, the number of days with freezing temperatures will decrease, and the number extreme precipitation events is expected to rise.
Urban spaces are particularly strongly impacted by the effects of extreme weather and climate change because these effects result in expensive material damage to infrastructure and buildings, and have the potential to endanger a large number of human lives. Moreover, the high rates of surface sealing and dense development in cities exponentially increase the incidence of floods, urban heat islands and droughts. To combat the effects of climate change, we need a new approach to urban development that reduces the vulnerability of urban infrastructure to heat and extreme precipitation. “In future, we will and we must take preventive measures in terms of both new construction and existing buildings and infrastructure,” stressed DBU General Secretary Alexander Bonde. In order to mitigate the effects of overheating and torrential rains, we need climate-sensitive urban planning with more green spaces and less surface sealing, more bodies of water, and more green roofs and building facades.
“Here in Germany, we have not yet adapted to climate change.
We need more green spaces and bodies of water in our cities.
But we also need to stop paving surfaces.
Green roofs could also help to decelerate the effects of climate change
and temporarily retain the water.”
Mojib Latif, climate researcher
and 2015 DBU Environmental Prize winner
In the view of the DBU, climate adaptation is the responsibility of the local communities and municipalities, and requires not only the political will to act, but also an interdisciplinary approach to the issues at hand. Targeted subsidy programmes will be required on both the federal and state levels in order to provide the local municipalities with the financing necessary to carry out these complex endeavours.
A number of DBU-sponsored model projects have already demonstrated that this can work well in practice: from designing multifunctional urban retention spaces (MURIEL) to the interdisciplinary partnerships between the “Planners in Dialogue” of the German Institute of Urban Affairs (DIFU), all the way to Bremen’s exemplary information system for climate adaptation (KLAS).
