BERLIN, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- The German government presented its national monitoring report on the country's adaptation strategy to climate change on Tuesday.
According to the report, the annual mean air temperature in Germany already increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius between 1881 and 2018.
In recent decades, a trend of extreme temperatures in Germany has become evident, according to the report. In particular, the number of "hot days" on which temperatures exceeded 30 degrees Celsius has "significantly increased."
"It is hard to imagine what it would mean if this really continued at this pace," said Germany's Environment Minister Svenja Schulze at the presentation of the report, adding that "much more climate protection" was needed on a global scale.
Since 1951, the number of hot days in Germany has increased from an average of about three per year to an average of about ten per year, according to the report. The summers in 2003, 2018 and 2019 were the hottest in Germany since official weather records began.
Rising temperatures also influence human health. On the basis of nationwide data, the monitoring report said that around 7,500 more people died during the hot summer of 2003 than would have been expected without the heat wave.
Rising temperatures and summer drought were also negatively affecting water supplies. The report found that appropriate farming practices were needed to improve soil humus and soil water supply to prepare for periods of drought.
The effects of climate change have increasingly found their way into landscape planning and other sectoral planning, such as the designation of areas for preventive flood protection.
As a precaution against damage caused by heavy rainfall and flash floods, the report recommended a higher density of extended natural hazard insurance. Although insurance density had increased significantly in recent years, it was still low nationwide: 43 percent for building insurance and 24 percent for household insurance.
Germany's coastal areas were particularly affected by rising water levels of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The increase in the intensity of storm surges was largely due to sea level rise, according to the report.
For Germany's coastal regions, especially for estuaries and low-lying coastal plains, this means a "slowly increasing threat," according to the monitoring report.
Rising temperatures also have an influence on natural ecosystems, the report found. Since the first monitoring report in 2015, the duration of the vegetation period in Germany has continually increased.
However, the report found that "the changes in seasonal weather patterns can have both positive and negative effects on agriculture."
