Home » News » 2023: Highest Rainfall and Hottest Weather Records Ever – NOS News

2023: Highest Rainfall and Hottest Weather Records Ever – NOS News

NOSHigh water in Hattem

NOS News•today, 09:59•Changed today, 10:47

There are still a few days left in 2023, but it is already certain that it will be a year full of weather and climate records. And they are cause for concern: never before has so much rain fallen in one year, at least not since measurements began in 1906. It was also the warmest year measured so far in the Netherlands. This is evident from the KNMI weather annual overview.

Worldwide, 2023 will also go down as the hottest year in living memory and record values ​​can be recorded for sea water temperature and sea level rise.

Rain Rain rain

The incessant rain of late, but also an extremely wet start to the year and a drowned March and April, have led to a precipitation record that is more than a quarter higher than average. Nationally, approximately 1060 millimeters fell this year, the normal is 795 millimeters.

Not the entire country suffered equally: in the southwest it was significantly drier than, for example, in North Holland or the Veluwe. The most precipitation fell at the Deelen weather station on the Veluwe, where 1,265 millimeters of rain fell, 400 mm more than normal.

Climate change does play a role, but does not explain everything. “In a warmer world there is more evaporation and therefore more precipitation,” says climatologist Peter Siegmund of the KNMI. But he emphasizes that a year with more than 1000 millimeters of rain will remain an exception in the future.

“We will have a wetter autumn and winter due to climate change, which is the case in all scenarios, even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases now. But as much rain as this year will remain extreme,” says Siegmund.

The figures for the Netherlands:

Mild winter, sunny summer

2023 was also one of the hottest years ever recorded, with an average temperature of 11.8 degrees Celsius. This is not due to a number of outliers. There were no heat waves and no more tropical days than average. It has been warmer across the board. We have – and had at the beginning of this year – a very mild winter.

New Year’s night was warmer than ever at 16.9 degrees. There were exceptionally few really cold days; the cold record remained at minus 10.1 degrees on December 1 in Leeuwarden. We will have such mild winters more and more often in the future, says Siegmund.

The summer was unprecedentedly sunny. On average across the country, the sun shone 1910 hours, normally almost 140 hours less. These extra hours are mainly due to June, the warmest and sunniest month since measurements began.

There was almost no rain in the first three weeks. For a while there was a lot of talk about the drought, but by the end of September – due to many rain showers – those worries were already far away.

The sunniest place in our country: the coast in Zeeland. In Vlissingen the sun shone for 2064 hours. Deelen gets the least sun, as well as the most rain.

This year’s weather in the Netherlands in photos:

  • ANP

    March – Traffic disruption on the N281 in Limburg due to snowfall

  • Annette van Citters via NOS Eyewitness

    June – Shelter from a heavy rain shower in Den Bosch

  • Pieter Perquin

    July – Storm damage in Haarlem due to storm Poly

  • ANP

    September – Crowds at Scheveningen on a warm September day

  • ProRail

    November – Damage to the track in Limburg due to storm Ciarán

  • ANP

    December – High water at the Rhine in Tolkamer due to heavy rain in Germany

Stormen Poly in Ciarán

One of the most notable weather extremes was storm Poly on July 5 this year. With wind gusts of 140 kilometers per hour, it was one of the strongest summer storms in fifty years. The KNMI issued code red, the only time this year. A 51-year-old woman was killed by a falling tree and, according to insurers, the damage could amount to up to 100 million euros. Storm Ciarán raged over the Netherlands in early November. Code orange was then in effect in large parts of the country.

The question of whether global warming plays a role in extreme weather cannot always be answered immediately, especially in storms and drought. For example, with storms it depends on the location and the season. According to the KNMI, there is no link between summer storm Poly – and other summer storms in the Netherlands – and climate change. The trend would even be that there will be fewer storms in the summer. This is different in other parts of the world, where storms and hurricanes can increase, especially in intensity.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world…

It was also a year full of extremes worldwide. There were record temperatures and weeks of heat waves spread across the world. Sea temperatures where climate scientists were shocked, worrying reports about the absence of sea ​​ice in Antarctica and the sea ​​level rising faster than expected.

At the beginning of this month, the World Meteorological Organization WMO announced that another global heat record will be broken in 2023, with temperatures well above the previous record in 2016.

Global warming is now 1.4 degrees compared to the period before the industrial age. Greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting global warming will only make extremes more common, scientists have been warning for years.

2023-12-29 08:59:26


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