With the warmest turn of the year since weather records began in 1881, another exceptional wine and climate year came to an end for the winegrowers on Saturday.

Characterized by long dry phases, several heavy rain events, an above-average amount of sunshine and excessively high temperatures.

According to meteorologists such as Dominik Jung from the wetter.net portal, 2022 was warmer and sunnier than any year before.

The German weather service wants to wait until the data from all measuring stations has been evaluated before confirming the record mark.

The previous record holder is 2018 with an average temperature of 10.45 degrees.

A value that, according to wetter.net, was exceeded in 2022 with 10.56 degrees Celsius.

Oliver Bock

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Rheingau-Taunus district and for Wiesbaden.

  • Follow I follow

Bianca Plückhahn from the German Weather Service took stock of viticulture in the Rheingau.

Accordingly, the year 2021 was an exceptional year because of the supposed return to "normal" conditions.

Because in 2022 there were again long phases of too dry and too warm conditions.

The winter of 2021/2022 was so wet that Geisenheim recorded an increase of 47 millimeters of rain per square meter compared to the long-term average.

But this water supply, which is so welcome and important for viticulture, was quickly used up.

Overall, the meteorological winter (December to February) was 1.8 Kelvin too warm compared to the period 1991 to 2020.

According to Pluckhahn, there were long periods of low precipitation from March onwards.

The rain deficit added up to 34 millimeters in spring.

"In addition to the dry conditions, there was an abundance of sunshine," sums up Plückhahn.

Accordingly, March was “the sunniest since 1890”, and spring ranks fourth in this table with a total of 717 hours of sunshine.

The series of months that were clearly too warm began in May.

From May to August, temperatures were 2.4 Kelvin above long-term averages, and October goes down as the second warmest in history.

“We had three drought summers in Hesse in four years”

This is confirmed by the balance of the Hessian State Office for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology.

According to this, the summer of 2022 was the second warmest in Hesse after 2003 and the driest since observation began.

With 56 summer days each with more than 25 degrees Celsius, there were "memorable records".

The summer from May to August was extreme: "We had three drought summers in Hesse in four years," says head of department Thomas Schmid and not only warns the winegrowers: "We have to be prepared for such hot and dry phases as a result of climate change become more frequent.

By mid-century this will be a normal summer.”

In addition, it is once again evident that precipitation is increasingly being registered as heavy rain events.

According to meteorologists' records, June was wet above average, but only because of the many thunderstorms at the end of the month.

Just under nine millimeters of rain fell in July and August – less than a tenth of what would have been expected.

In September, when the winegrowers actually no longer wanted rain from above, there was almost 110 millimeters more rain than in the previous four months combined.

How deceptive the weather statistics are can be seen from the fact that in the vegetation period between April and October a rain deficit of only nine millimeters was recorded.

However, only three heavy rain events account for almost a third of the total precipitation.

The sun shone 320 hours longer than the average for the period between 1991 and 2020. This puts 2022 in fourth place among the sunniest years since records began.

For the winegrowers, this means that the high evaporation rate in the soil was not compensated for by rain.

In Plückhahn's view, the accumulation of extreme events in recent years is evidence of climate change and offers a foretaste "of the hardly predictable weather conditions" of the future.