Monthly review April 2022

With a mean temperature of 7.8 °C, the spring month of April was 0.2 degrees too cold in
our region compared to the climate reference period 1961-1990.
The sun shines for a total of 173 hours. This corresponds to an plus of 27 hours. On 13 April,
as in March, the Sahara again greeted us with its dust and clouded the atmosphere. The sum of all individual measurements of precipitation reached 29.1 mm in Coswig in April. The monthly total thus corresponded to 61% of the reference value for this month. We thus again registered a rather dry spring month. The annual precipitation balance so far in 2022 is thus now minus 8 mm. The Halle-Leipzig area and our Meissen-Coswig-Radebeul area proved to be the driest regions in Germany in April. The south and west in particular received considerably more rain than the east of Germany. Foehn effects from the Harz Mountains, the Thuringian Forest and the Ore Mountains played a not insignificant role here.

Weather patterns:

In the course of April, unusual air pressure patterns in the 500hPa level sometimes
appeared, eg quadruple patterns with the blocking high over Fennoscandia and three
distinct low-pressure centers to the west, southwest and south of it (Fig.1). In addition,
weather patterns with high air pressure over northern Europe and low air pressure over
southern Europe ("high-over-low") characterized our weather patterns.

View to India:
India and Pakistan have been experiencing an unusually early heat wave since the beginning of March
(the strongest in over 100 years). Air temperatures of up to almost 50 °C already occurred in April.
Incidentally, unprecedented extreme heat waves are on the increase worldwide. Now, India is also
threatened with enormous crop failures, which, in the context of the consequences of the war
regarding Ukrainian grain supplies, further exacerbate the global food problem.