Temperatures in De Bilt climbed to 19 degrees on Tuesday, making it the warmest November 6th in the Netherlands since temperature measurements started in 1901. The previous record was 17.1 degrees in 2005. This is the 13th heat record broken this year, Weeronline reports.
Westdorpe and Gilze-Rijen even had official warm days on Tuesday with maximums of 20.4 and 20.0 degrees respectively.
The Netherlands will hold a major climate summit, comparable to the one in Paris almost three years ago, in 2020, Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen of Infrastructure and Water Management announced at the presentation of a new global climate committee which will be established in Rotterdam and Groningen. The Global Commission on Adaption will draw up a global action plan against the consequences of climate change, among other things, NOS reports.
Temperatures climbed to 20.1 degrees in De Bilt on Sunday, making Sunday the 116th official warm day in the Netherlands this year. Maximum temperatures are expected to climb to 22 degrees in De Bilt on Monday, which means that the 116 warm days record from 2003 will be broken, Weeronline reports.
Up to and including Thursday, the record number of official warm days is expected to climb to 120, according to the weather service. An official warm day is when temperatures climb to over 20 degrees at the national weather station in De Bilt.
After this year's hot summer, the Netherlands and the rest of the world can expect another four unusually warm years, according to a new statistical analysis of the world temperature by Sybren Drijfhout of the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI and French colleague Florian Sevellec from the University of Brest, the Volkskrant reports.
If the Netherlands' average temperature rises by 3 degrees due to global warming, the country will be too hot for nearly 500 plant species, according to research Wageningen University published on Thursday. That is around 40 percent of all plant species in the country, ANP reports.
Plants that will disappear with 3 degree temperature increase include the wild strawberry, the Gentiana cruciata, the Linnaea borealis and the Cornus suecica, according to the researchers.
The Netherlands is "blind to drought" according to researcher Henny van Lanen of Wageningen University. The country needs to build up larger reserves of fresh water to prevent drinking water running out during extreme droughts, multiple experts warn, Het Parool reports.
"As a low lying country with large rivers, we are always working on preventing wetness. That explains why we are now so surprised by the drought", Van Lanen said to the newspaper. "Dutch water policy is very conservative: the rest of Europe has been arming itself against drought for much longer."
Christmas day in the Netherlands will be predominantly cloudy with some light rain in the morning, according to meteorological institute KNMI. There is no chance of snow.
Afternoon temperatures will climb to a relatively mild 9 degrees Celsius. And a moderate to strong south-westerly wind will blow in the afternoon.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte is participating in the One Planet Summit in Paris on Tuesday. This informal climate summit marks the two year anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement.
This informal summit was arranged by French president Emmanuel Macron. Its aim is to look at how far countries have come to meeting their climate goals set in the agreement, and to motivate them to achieve these goals.
The Netherlands is falling behind internationally in breaking the link between CO2 emissions and economic growth, according to advisory office PwC in its Low Carbon Economy Index 2017, ANP reports.
For this index, the researchers looked at how much carbon dioxide a country emits to make a million dollars. In the Netherlands the so-called CO2 intensity increased by 0.1 percent. While the carbon intensity for the G20 countries - the world's 20 biggest economies - decreased by 2.6 percent on average.
With the new Dutch government's plans, the Netherlands can reach about half of the climate goals set in the Paris climate agreement, according to an analysis by living environment planning office PBL. In order to achieve all the goals in the Paris Agreement, which is aimed at limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees, the government must make additional agreements with the Dutch industry, the PBL says, ANP reports.
The new Dutch government presented a very ambitious energy policy in its government agreement on Tuesday. By 2030 the Rutte III cabinet wants the Netherlands' greenhouse gas emissions to be 49 percent lower than the level it was in 1990, a higher goal than what European rules currently demand. The governments is also planning to advocate for a 55 percent reduction in emissions in Europe.
The United Nations Global Center of Excellence on Climate Adaption (GCECA) that is opening in the Netherlands, will be based in Rotterdam and Groningen, State Secretary Sharon Dijksma of Infrastructure and Environment announced. The two cities' joint application had the most convincing plan, she said, according to NOS.
Frits Paymans, a VVD State member in Zuid-Holland, thinks that global warming is not caused by humans and that it is a conspiracy from which large multinationals benefit greatly, he said to Omroep West. His statements were received with shocked disbelief from other members of his party.
"The earth hasn't warmed over the past 20 years", Paymans said to the broadcaster. He called global warming a hype. "Climate change has always been here. The climate is never stable. It is the sum of all weather conditions."
Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement is a "turning point" in the relationship between America and the Netherlands, Dutch Minister Bert Koenders of Foreign Affairs said in a speech at Harvard University, ANP reports. "On the one hand, cooperation is needed more than ever, but it is also time for Europe to take its own responsibility", Koenders said.
By stepping out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the United States is losing out on economic opportunities and innovation possibilities, former UN climate director Yvo de Boer said to BNR. With his decision, Donald trump is boosting the economy of the past, rather than investing in the economy of the future, he said.
The United States is pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, president Donald Trump announced in a statement at the White House on Thursday afternoon, local time. The Netherlands deplores this decision, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in response. Our country and the rest of the world remains committed to battling climate change, he stressed. Foreign Affairs Minister Bert Koenders called Trump's decision a "cardinal error", Environment State Secretary Sharon Dijksma called it a "historic mistake".
State Secretary Sharon Dijksma of Infrastructure and Environment calls it a "bitter disappointment" that the United States seems to be planning to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, as American media reported widely on Wednesday. "If it's true, today is a sad day for the world", she said to RTL Nieuws.
On Wednesday American media sources massively reported that president Donald Trump will abandon the climate pact, though there is no official confirmation from the White House yet. On Twitter Trump said he will announce his plans at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, local time.
American companies will face detrimental consequences if U.S. president Donald Trump decides to withdraw his country from the Paris climate agreement, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden warned in an interview with British newspaper Financial Times. Van Beurden is one of the first to criticize Trump's decisions from the business community, which is set to benefit from Trump's promises of tax cuts and relaxed rules, RTL Nieuws reports.
Greenpeace, Milieudefensie, Oxfam Novib and BankTrack filed a joint complaint against ING over the bank's continued investment in fossil fuels. According to the organization, ING still invests billions of euros in fossil energy and is thereby violating OECD guidelines, BNR reports.
To reach the targets set in the Paris Climate Agreement, the European Union must reduce its CO2 emissions faster, State Secretary Sharon Dijksma of Infrastructure and Environment said in Brussels at a meeting of EU Environment Ministers on Tuesday. The EU's ambitions are too low and the Netherlands and other countries are so concerned that they are considering voting against the EU plans and teaming up to come to their own, separate and more ambitious agreements, the Volkskrant reports.
Nearly 40 Dutch municipalities, a number of educational institutions and numerous Dutch businesses are turning down the heat a little on Friday for Warm Sweater Day. Under te slogan "Warm yourself, not the world", the organizers of Warm Sweater Day want to draw attention to global warming, the Telegraaf reports.
On Monday State Secretary Sharon Dijksma of Infrastructure and Environment is giving the go ahead for the establishment of the Global Center of Excellence on Climate change. The center will be based in the Netherlands and is being established by the Netherlands, Japan and the United Nations environmental organization UNEP, NU.nl reports.
Not a single political party in the Netherlands managed to go far enough in their election promises on the environment to reach the climate target set in the Paris Agreement, the Volkskrant reports based on its own analysis of the election campaigns of the Dutch parties. Even where programs embrace the Paris targets, their intentions fall short, according to the newspaper.
A group of 40 large Ducth companies called on the next Dutch government to to lay long-term goals of the Climate Agreement down in law. This is the only way to curb global warming, the companies wrote in a letter in the Volkskrant on Wednesday.
