Has autumn arrived early?

the perfectly healthy honeysuckle on my balcony thinks its Herbst already and is shedding loeaves and on a walk today I noticed trees all over the city are starting to get brown leaves that are beginning to fall. And it is still July with summer not remotely over. What the heck is happening?

Lack of water I imagine.

Probably more the fact that its been over 30 degree's almost every day for about 8 weeks, and pretty much no rain has fallen. Your tree is not getting ready for winter, it's just plain dying..

my tree is a vine actually and has been watered every day in correct amounts. It actually looks very healthy otherwise which meant I was a little mystefied until I started noticing it was happening to trees all over the city. I've been in droughts before and trees are actually very resilient being the last to turn brown and lose leaves. But here in Munich the grass is still green so droughts and heat don't really seem to be a viable explanation.

actually something similar happened in London a few years back. I can't remember the explanation then though I seem to remember it had something to do with unusual weather jiggering with the plants' biological clocks.

Don't know about your vine but the trees in the parks and along the streets are shrivelling from lack of water. The ground is dry to a depth of 80cm, only three or four days of steady rain would make up for the lack of moisture.

possibly. But why is the grass still green even where sprinklers have not been used? And my vine is well watered and still growing new tendrils at the same time as some of it's leaves are turning brown. Munich doesn't look 'scorched' in the way drought-hit places do.

Sunburn. Seriously, some plants get it. Nothing to do with the temperature directly or the amount of water, rather the amount of sun that hits it.

Heard a report on Bayern 3 that they are estimating that a huge number of trees are going to die if this keeps up another few weeks. I think that a couple of my neighbors trees are already dead.

am i the only one to find it odd that this'll kill trees? i know it's not the same continent etc, but some same and similar types of trees survive worse summers than this in other places.

now, i'm not a botanist or anything just going by experience so yeah they could be dying, but many of these trees are quite old and so i find it hard to believe that in the tree's entire life it has not come across a hot, dry summer before.

is this the longest period of sustained heat that Bavaria has ever had?

Ummm...Impossible question. No meteorologist has been alive long enough to substantiate that. You would have to ask God or Allah.
take care,
space

I have heard that it has been the hottest July in recorded history.

This is certainly probably true for the UK (depending on what the last couple of days are like). Not sure about Bavaria.

The water table may be high in the areas where the grass is green and or the grass may be partly shaded by the trees. The soil may be exceptional and uncompacted and the grass may have been fertilized properly.

As far as your vine is concerned, brown leaves in mid summer is not uncommon. The earliest leaves are simply at the end of their lifecycle and if you're watering it well and it's planted in good soil or you've fertilized it, the brown leaves are of no concern. Obviously with the long spell of hot and dry weather, it's hard to make comparisons but even in wet years, browning leaves on herbaceous perennials/vines/shrubs in midsummer is not uncommon.

Some tree species will begin to lose their leaves earlier than others, some later. This is natural. Alders are a prime example of trees that start to lose their leaves early in the season no matter the weather.