Munich hit by heaviest snowfall since 1938, forum claims

Heaviest Munich snowfall since 1938 and the frozen plane headed to Dubai

Nothing took off in Munich. According to a forum post, the city experienced its heaviest recorded snowfall — surpassing the previous record from 1938 — with no flights, buses, or trams operating for an entire day. Social media images showed aircraft covered in snow on the tarmac. One of them, according to sources cited alongside these photos, was destined for the Dubai climate summit. The irony was self-evident.

What the Munich airport images show

The material that sparked this discussion consists of photographs taken at Munich Airport that same day. Stationary planes, white fuselages, impassable runways. Based on this, two conclusions circulated: the city was paralyzed by cold weather, and among the grounded aircraft was one flying to a conference on global warming.

It is important to separate the two layers. The first is visible in the photos: there is snow and stationary planes. The second is an attribution by some sources, not verified data. In any case, the scene served as a trigger: a metaphor for the gap between rhetoric and reality.

Does a snowstorm disprove climate change?

No. And here begins the interesting part, because a single snow event neither confirms nor refutes anything.

The underlying confusion lies in treating weather and climate as synonyms. Weather is what happens on a specific Tuesday in a specific city; climate is a decades-long average over a vast territory. A storm, however intense, does not shift that average. Neither does an isolated heatwave.

Averages can be debated with data. Some argue that in Spain winters have become milder and summers hotter in recent months, which is precisely what global warming measures. Others respond that events like Munich’s point to the opposite. Neither interpretation holds up based on a photo of a snow-covered runway: full records are needed.

Snow in the Alps: half a meter and ten degrees below zero

In the mountains near Zurich, a forum user claimed to have half a meter of snow on their terrace and roof, with temperatures dropping from -5 to -10 degrees, linking to the Swiss public broadcaster’s website.

Anyone living in Central Europe asks whether this is exceptional or just January. Some responded that one or two such events occur each January or February in inland Germany. In other words: December snow in Bavaria is not a statistical anomaly, it is the season working as expected.

Tonga volcano and 150 million tons of water vapor

Alternative explanations prominently antiestéticatured the 2022 underwater eruption of Tonga. The argument, spread by a forum user citing a meteorology website: it injected approximately 150 million metric tons of water vapor into the atmosphere, increasing the presence of this greenhouse gas globally by 13%. With this claim, some attribute Pakistan’s catastrophic 2022 floods to this phenomenon rather than human emissions.

This is a hypothesis confidently shared on social media, but the figure is not independently verified by the material.

November 2023 colder than November 1981 in the US

Another data point used as ammunition, attributed to a tweet in the thread: in the United States, November 2023 was colder than November 1981. This comparison fueled the question summarizing all skepticism: if emissions warm the planet, how did the last 1.5 billion tons emitted over 42 years cool an entire territory?

The statistical answer is that a single year and a single country do not constitute the series. The political answer, heard at dinner tables, is that the series is cherry-picked. In between remains the perennial problem: the granularity of records, whether a pine tree’s growth ring reflects drought or cold, and the limits of model precision.

Dubai, private jets, and a coal plant every ten days

The climate summit in Dubai added its own layer of paradox. A city with permanent air conditioning and indoor ski slopes hosts negotiators. It is claimed that China and India signed declarations while building new coal capacity at a rate of one plant every ten days, and that attendees arrived via private aviation. All details are debatable, but they explain why the slogan resonates so little outside auditoriums.

If climate has behaved as it has for hundreds of thousands of years — cycles, glaciations, warm periods — it is reasonable to expect it will continue changing, with or without us. The next major snowfall in Munich will likely arrive in January or February. And someone will post the photo again.