Is that a record that a city can be happy about in view of climate change? In any case, the German Weather Service (DWD) has subsequently corrected its heat record value for this year: The highest temperature so far was measured on Wednesday in Hamburg and not in Baden-Württemberg as initially reported. The nationwide highest value in 2022 was 40.1 degrees at the Hamburg-Neuwiedenthal measuring point, as the DWD announced on Thursday evening. An initially reported provisional maximum value of 40.3 degrees from Bad Mergentheim was not confirmed.
The measurement on Wednesday was correct there. “However, an immediate examination of the site revealed that the temperature data from the measuring field are only representative of a very local environment due to neighboring buildings and the vegetation in the immediate vicinity in low-wind weather conditions, as in the past few days,” the DWD explained on Thursday.
The DWD had already emphasized on Wednesday that the values ??still had to be checked. On the DWD list of the hottest places on July 20th, Hamburg-Neuwiedenthal is followed by Barsinghausen-Hohenbostel (Lower Saxony) and Huy-Pabstorf (Saxony-Anhalt), each with 40.0 degrees. A total of more than 40 degrees were measured in three places on Wednesday. The German record is 41.2 degrees, measured on July 25, 2019 at two stations in North Rhine-Westphalia.
For Hamburg, the 40.1 degrees is also the all-time record. On Thursday, however, it was muggy and warm for a long time until long rain showers rolled over most parts of the city in the afternoon and caused further cooling. The Hamburg meteorologist Frank Böttcher saw confirmation in the high temperatures: “There is hardly an extreme weather event that we can be so sure that it is caused by global warming as these heat waves. Such extreme heat would be expected every 250 years within the natural variability of a stable climate, or every 10 years in the case of global warming,” he said.
