Germans tackle climate change riddle

By Sarah Mukherjee
BBC News, Darmstadt

It looks like Joe 90's reception room. Brightly coloured, 1960s-style chairs arranged around tables that look like they've been made out of melted gobstoppers.

Many gardening books are now incorrect

From the ceiling, a variety of whacky looking, golden satellite models hang in various stages of mock-lift off.

But while the interior designer might have a sense of humour, the work that's done here could, rather like an episode of Joe 90, involve scientists helping to save the planet.

This is Eumetstat, in the German town of Darmstadt.

From here, hugely sophisticated weather satellites are monitored as they provide millions of pieces of information about weather systems across the globe to European weather services.

"In the last few months, the satellites we use have become much more sophisticated, providing much more information about all sorts of meteorological systems," says the organisation's communications manager, Livia Briese, "and we already working on the next generation of satellites".

Warmer winters

In the cool control centre, a couple of scientists in fleeces monitor banks of huge television screens.

From here, they have monitored forest fires in Portugal, sulphur dioxide plumes in Montserrat, and lava flows on Mount Etna.

The way the planet reacts to these events is helping weather experts build up ever more sophisticated models of what is happening to the global climate and something that has struck forecasters across Europe is the record breaking warmth of this winter.

In the UK, it is one of the warmest since records began, with 2007 picking up where 2006 left off.

The last five years have all been the warmest since 1914. And here in Germany, the same is true.

We normally run an advice service for hay-fever sufferers in the spring, but we've had to do it much earlier this year because of the blossom Tobias Fuchs

Tobias Fuchs, from the German Weather Service, the DWD, says the most recent figures show that Germany is having the warmest winter since records began in 1901, on average 4C warmer than average.

Germans have been having weather more normally associated with the South of France.

"It's affected all sorts of things," Mr Fuchs says, "not just the winter sports - not only has there been no snow, but the artificial snow makers couldn't work because the snow simply melted.

"There has been a lot of other natural phenomena. For example, the vegetation in the meadows has kept on growing, when it really needs to stop for a couple of months - which it normally does during the winter."

"And the hazelnut trees have been in blossom since December. We normally run an advice service for hay-fever sufferers in the spring, but we've had to do it much earlier this year because of the blossom."

Human blame?

But it is not just Germany. In Russia, temperatures as much as 10C above the average have unnerved Russians used to the grinding cold of winter.

Bears have come out of hibernation in zoos weeks early, and spring flowers have appeared in the capital.

Ski resorts in the Czech Republic have struggled as much as the German ones, and it has been the hottest winter in Holland for centuries.

But the question is: are we doing all this to the climate?

The weather forecasting fraternity are not happy about linking this directly to climate change.

"The planet has been around for billions of years - you cannot see five or six hot winters as a significant pattern in those terms" says Mr Fuchs, and Wayne Elliot from the UK Met Office will only go as far as describing the tumbling British and European records as "intriguing".

But whatever the cause, Mr Fuchs says businesses are already thinking about how to adapt if these warm temperatures become the norm.

"We need water in the summer to cool our power stations, deep enough rivers to allow ships to navigate, enough wind for turbines," he says.

Whatever the cause of these apparently radical shifts in temperature, weather forecasters agree that companies - and individuals - will have to get used to adapting.