Extreme weather events are on the rise, and Earth's wind systems play a major role in this. More and more frequently, they carry enormous amounts of precipitation in all forms. Or they bring nothing at all. We need wind. It balances out temperature differences. Its air masses carry plant seeds across the land. How is climate change altering the jet stream, which is so crucial for weather in Europe?

Better understanding wind extremes

ZDF weather expert Özden Terli guides us through this scientific investigation – from the polar winds above Svalbard to the south-westerly winds over the Namib Desert. Along the way, he meets people who are tirelessly working to measure and better understand wind and related meteorological phenomena on Earth. Christof Lüpkes from the Alfred Wegener Institute, for instance, is studying changes in air masses in the Arctic and their significance for the climate in Central Europe.

The coast of Namibia is one of the windiest regions on Earth. In the nearby Namib – one of the few coastal and fog deserts on Earth – it becomes clear just how sensitive the balance within the climate system is. A small research station collects daily wind and weather data and reliably supplies it to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva.

The Global Greenhouse Gas Watch

At the Hohenpeißenberg in Bavaria, the oldest mountain weather observatory in the world, Christian Plaß-Dülmer and his team are working to refine the technique of so-called back-trajectories in collaboration with many other research institutions worldwide – allowing them to demonstrate which regions pollutants and greenhouse gases are entering the atmosphere from. The aim is to use weather data collected around the globe for a global concept: the initiative known as "The Global Greenhouse Gas Watch".

The newly elected Secretary-General of the WMO, Andrea Celeste Saulo, has named this initiative, together with the "Early Warning System", as one of the WMO's most important goals in relation to climate change.

Now available to watch in the 3sat media library!