Sustainability• May 8, 5:15 PM • Modified on May 8, 7:58 PM
'We are heading for the warmest summer ever'
Author : BNR Web Editors
Global warming continues to exceed the critical one and a half degrees and the past month was one of the warmest ever, calculated the European climate agency Copernicus. According to Reinout van den Born of weerverteller.nl we are heading for the warmest summer ever. 'Of the last 22 months, 21 have actually been the warmest ever or almost the warmest ever. We have also remained above that 1.5 degrees for the entire period.'

Meteorologists warn that the coming summer in the Netherlands could be the warmest ever. The current record dates from 1976. That year saw a heat wave that lasted 17 days in De Bilt. The year also had a very dry summer. At the end of the summer, the precipitation deficit had increased to 300 millimeters or more in many places. The growing season of 1976 is recorded as the driest ever measured. This year, Europe is also warning of drought in the coming months. 'Of the last 22 months, 21 have actually been the warmest ever or almost the warmest ever. We also stayed above 1.5 degrees during that entire period.'

Various causes
According to Van den Born, this has several causes, such as the fact that there is less cloud cover on earth than previously thought. 'This results in extra sunshine. But the seas are also much warmer than we thought. This in turn has to do with a change in the fuel used in shipping. It was desulphurised a few years ago, which means that there is also much less cloud cover at sea and the sun can heat the seawater much more easily than before.'

'There is a huge area, including the Netherlands, where there has been almost no rain in recent months, that situation has been going on for a very long time, and it seems to be going on for a very long time. That drought is now intensifying', says Van den Born. 'It seems to be going on all summer long. It is very similar to the summer of 1976, that was an incredibly warm summer.'

Last month was the second warmest April globally since records began, Copernicus reports. According to Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF, it is a continuation of a long series of months with temperatures of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 'Continued climate monitoring is an essential tool to understand and respond to the ongoing changes in our climate system.'

The average temperature over European land in April 2025 was 9.4 degrees Celsius, more than 1.0 degrees higher than the average from April 1991 to 2020. This makes it the sixth warmest April for Europe. Across Europe, temperatures were predominantly above average, with the largest temperature deviations in Eastern Europe, Western Russia, Kazakhstan and Norway. Parts of Turkey, eastern Bulgaria and Romania and Crimea were colder than normal.

Above and below average
Outside Europe, April temperatures were most above average in the Russian Far East and much of west-central Asia. They were also above average in most of North America, part of Australia, and on the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica. Temperatures were most below average in southern South America, in eastern Canada in the Great Lakes region and over Hudson Bay, in northeastern Greenland, and Spitsbergen.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission, publishes monthly climate bulletins on observed changes in global surface air and sea temperatures, sea ice cover and hydrological variables. Most of the reported findings are based on the ERA5 reanalysis dataset, based on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.