Weather 2023: Hottest year ever and windier than for a long time

2023 was the windiest year since 2007, according to statistics from the German Weather Service (DWD). However, if sailors wanted to benefit from this, they had to move their yachts mainly in the cold season. This is because wind speeds last year were significantly higher than the long-term average, particularly in January, November and December.

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In 2021, the average wind speed across Germany at a height of 100 metres reached a low point and has risen continuously since then. In 2023, it was 6 m/s, i.e. just under 12 knots. The DWD statistics begin in 1950, but there is no discernible trend towards more or less wind in Germany.

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Temperatures are a different story. 2023 was the warmest year worldwide and in Germany since weather records began. The average annual temperature was 10.6 degrees Celsius, equalling the previous record from 2018 (10.5 °C). "This is remarkable because the summer of 2023 was not characterised by particularly many heatwaves," commented Dr Andreas Becker, Head of Climate Monitoring at the DWD. The record is mainly due to an extremely mild winter and an above-average warm autumn with a record September. The linear increase in the average annual temperature since 1881 has thus risen by 0.1 degrees to 1.8 degrees.

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Rising temperatures and more extreme weather events in the future

Rising emissions of greenhouse gases continue to be the main cause of climate change and the associated warming of the atmosphere and oceans. The concentration of these gases reached new record levels in 2023. "Climate change is still continuing unabated," says Becker. The DWD's decadal climate prediction system predicts that temperatures will continue to rise worldwide over many ocean and land areas in 2024 and the coming years. In most regions of Germany, there is a moderate probability that conditions will be warmer in 2024 compared to the reference period from 1991 to 2020.

According to the DWD, not only is the annual average temperature expected to rise by around 2 °C to 4 °C across Germany by the end of the century, but we can also expect longer-lasting heatwaves or an increasing number of tropical nights, i.e. nights with a minimum temperature of 20 °C. However, an even more noticeable consequence of climate change in the long term is likely to be the expected increase in extreme weather events such as heatwaves or the devastating Baltic Sea storm surge in autumn 2023.

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