Warmer than 50 degrees? Happens often, often, often

These are extreme temperatures that also occurred prior to 2010, but much lower. Between 1980 and 2009, there were an average of 14 days a year, according to a BBC analysis. Between 2010 and 2019, there was an average of 26.

Not only in the desert

Then you can think that this only happens in the desert, or in other places where the Dutch rarely come. But that is not true. The extreme heat is spreading all over the world, and although it will still reach 50 degrees or more mainly in the Middle East, it is not far from elsewhere.

This summer the temperature was almost 49 degrees in Italy and 49.6 degrees in Canada. So we’ll pass 50 degrees if we don’t move quickly, say climate scientists.

Fossil fuels

The BBC has found that temperatures above 45 degrees are becoming more common. In the past 10 years this has happened on average about two weeks more per year than in the previous period.

And what about the Netherlands? And the temperature in our country is also rising significantly, as I noticed last summer. The 2018, 2019 and 2020 seasons have been very hot. “We hit 40 degrees for the first time,” says Nikulin Kron of Poinradar. “This is really due to climate change.”

Not many tropical days

Perhaps the summer that just ended was less warm. Although that’s not too bad, according to Kron: “This summer may have felt like a bad summer, but the temperature was average. There weren’t many summer and tropical days in between.”

And of course it was very hot in Holland in the last century. But where it happens so often now, it was an exception back then. That infamous summer of 1976, for example. For a long time it was the warmest summer ever, but now 4 summers of 1976 have passed.

The scientists the BBC spoke to were unanimous in their judgment. “100 per cent of the warming can be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels,” said Frederic Otto of the University of Oxford.