On July 9, a Russian-language Threads account 369neworder shared a photo of a weather forecast with the caption “Global Warming.” The post compares two photos of the German regional broadcaster Tagesthemen’s weather forecast. In the first photo, the map is in green, dated June 21, 2017, and shows temperatures between 20 and 37 degrees Celsius, while in the second photo, the map is in yellow and red, dated June 21, 2022, and shows temperatures between 19 and 32 degrees Celsius.
The disseminated post is misleading and creates the impression that almost the same temperature is now considered global warming, which was considered normal in the past. Both photos are real and from the German daily news program Tagesthemen, although until 2019 the weather forecast graphics in the program were in green, regardless of what temperature was recorded. Since 2019, the channel has updated its design, and the map’s colors changed according to the weather forecast.
AFP: The maps are real, although misleading
The post in question was circulated in different languages in 2022 and was verified by the AFP fact-checking service.
The weather forecast maps shown in the pictures are real and are from Tagesthemen, a daily news program broadcast by ARD, Germany’s regional public broadcaster.
The first photo showing the map in green aired on June 21, 2017, and was presented by weather forecaster Claudia Kleinert.
The second photo, with the map in yellow and red colors, is from the same program and aired on June 20, 2022, one day before the date indicated in the broadcast photo.
ARD representative Sabine Renken said in an email to AFP on July 27, 2022, that until the end of 2019, weather forecasts for Tagesthemen were produced by another company and the map was always in green, regardless of the temperature. Renken said that since January 2020, the ARD Meteorological Center has opened and provides the weather forecast graphics itself, the design and presentation have become standardized for ARD broadcasts, both Tagesschau and Tagesthemen programs.
Another ARD news program, Tagesschau, has been using colors to show temperature for 30 years, Ranken said. For example, the June 1999 issue uses a red map to show the temperature, and the 2010 edition of the Tagesschau also uses different color maps.
Tagesthemen adopted a similar format in 2020, as evidenced by the programs from June to August. The program also used red maps to show weather forecasts in its summer 2021 broadcasts.
The social media post is presented to illustrate that global warming is exaggerated with the aim of misleading people. This disinformation has been circulating for years and “Myth Detector” has prepared a number of articles on this topic.
About the Source
An anonymous Russian-language account “369neworder” has spread false or misleading information several times in the past, some of which were debunked by “Myth Detector.”
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