The year 2022 still had so many hours of sunshine in December that it will now go down in history as the sunniest year since nationwide records began in 1951.
Up to Christmas Day, the weather stations measured an average of 2016.1 hours of sunshine in Germany.
The sunniest year so far, 2016, had 2015.4 hours of sunshine.
The fact that the number of hours of sunshine in Germany continues to rise is also due to the climate crisis.
Eight of the ten sunniest years fall in the current century.
Kachelmannwetter, the service of meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann, explained that this year again comparatively little humid air was measured.
2022 and the past few years have all been rather dry.
The years with the least measured hours of sunshine are almost half a century ago: in 1978 and 1977 only 1374 and 1392 hours of sunshine were recorded.
According to the German Weather Service, the sun shone an average of 1665 hours a year in the reference period from 1991 to 2020.
April in particular has become significantly sunnier than it was in the decades before 1990.