The great drought of 2018: Germany’s endless summer

Climate change is becoming increasingly apparent. In 2018, the whole world struggled with droughts, floods and other disasters. Germany also had to contend with systemic distortions, says Paul Hockenos. Climate change’s new abnormal means reinventing just about everything. Two hotties: agriculture and cargo transport in a warmer world.  2018 was not the first year that the effects of climate change made their presence felt on the continent; scientists have tracked and documented Europe’s gradually warmer summers and outbursts of extreme weather for two decades. But it was definitely the year that Europeans – and Germans above all – experienced it first hand so directly, with repercussions for lifestyle, the food chain, wildlife, and commerce. The upshot is just sinking in: climate change is no longer abstract – and we have to change with it. The summer of 2018 may or may not have been the hottest on record (some meteorologists claim that July/August 2003 were hotter) but the year is definitely the driest since record-keeping began, particularly in Germany, with drought conditions lasting from April …