Overview

• Germany’s meteorological and physical societies issued a Klimaaufruf at the Extremwetterkongress in Hamburg urging policymakers to prepare for the possibility of 3°C warming by mid‑century and to accelerate the phase‑out of fossil fuels.
• Researchers highlighting the warning point to exceptional global temperatures in 2023–2024 and faster ocean heat uptake as reasons to assume higher‑end risks in planning.
• Several climate scientists counter that reaching 3°C by 2050 would require a doubling or tripling of the current warming rate, noting a recent pace around 0.25–0.3°C per decade and insufficient evidence for a sustained jump.
• Stefan Rahmstorf calls a 3°C world catastrophic, saying extreme weather would make orderly adaptation nearly impossible and render some regions effectively uninhabitable.
• The groups urge robust adaptation planning, including discussion of retreat from low‑lying German coasts, as experts warn of mounting health impacts and economic damages that could approach the high‑hundreds‑of‑billions of euros by 2050 without stronger climate action.