Netherlands is heating up twice as fast as global average: KNMI researcher
The temperature in the Netherlands is continuing to warm up. In the future, the hottest days could even increase up to four times faster than the global average, a climate researcher told Het Parool.
Gerard van der Schrier, a climate researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), told the paper that the Netherlands is currently heating up twice as fast as the global average, "mainly because we have so much sun."
This warming can also worsen droughts, such as the one the Netherlands experienced this summer. However, this year's drought was a "matter of chance" and not a byproduct of climate change, said Peter Siegmund, another KNMI researcher.
Around the world, oceans are warming up and the weather is becoming wetter. But this is not evenly spread across the globe, Siegmund explained. As a result, some areas are actually becoming drier. The forecast for the Netherlands largely depends on the amount of fossil fuels people continue to burn, Siegmund said.
"We expect it to become sunnier and drier in the future, especially in the summer, while the winters are slightly warmer and wetter," Siegmund said. “Southern Europe is expected to be drier, Northern Europe wetter, and we are somewhere in between."
The KNMI researcher called Amsterdam "the new Paris" based on historical data. The Dutch capital currently sees the average annual temperature that the French capital had 50 years prior. "In spring, the temperature in Amsterdam can even be compared to that in Nice in the 1970s," Siegmund said.
