Germany’s DWD national weather service here has published the result of March 2016 weather in Germany – having crunched the data from some 2000 stations scattered across the country.
Although DWD insists March was “mild”, a closer look at the data reveals that it was in fact 0.3°C cooler than the 1981-2010 mean.
How did the DWD conclude that the month was warm? It used the mean of the obsolete 1961 – 1990 period, a time when the globe was gripped in a cool spell and the media was warning of “global cooling”. Compared to that period, March 2016 in Germany was 0.5°C warmer. Why the DWD still uses the 1961 – 1990 reference period while the rest of the world (e.g. NOAA, WMO, etc.) uses the 1981 – 2010 period remains a mystery.
Perhaps it has a little to do with activist science. Schneefan at wobleibtdieerderwaermung.de called the DWD press release an April Fool’s trick, writing:
By using the old climate mean, a warming gets faked – as we see once again in March 2016 in Germany – a realistic look compared to the mean of the last three decades […] shows that the trend has even switched to some cooling, …”
Indeed on April 1st Central Germany even woke up to a real weather April Fools trick – a blanket of snow on the ground: “Central Germany gets April Fooled with heavy snowfall“.
A plot of March temperatures over the past 30 years shows that 2016 was in fact among the colder ones and that the country has not seen any March warming over the past 30 years.
Interestingly, the chart above shows that 8 years saw March outside of the shaded normal range: 4 were too warm and 4 were too cold. Clearly the cold ones were more extreme than the warm ones. Where’s the warming?
Finally, don’t be surprised if the March 2016 figure gets revised downward in a few weeks time. Over the past months the DWD has developed a habit of putting out “warmed” press releases on preliminary monthly results, only to quietly revise them downwards later on.