KNMI Climate Scenarios
Current KNMI'06 scenarios for temperature
01-09-2008
Future worldwide
Climate models calculate a global mean temperature increase of 1°C up to 6°C for the year 2100, compared to 1990. In Europe the average temperature will probably increase slightly faster than the world average. In the Scandinavian countries especially winter temperatures will increase more rapidly than the global average, and in southern Europe summer temperatures will increase more rapidly.
Future in the Netherlands
In the KNMI'06 climate scenarios the temperature increase in the Netherlands does not equal global temperature rise. The Netherlands is located at the edge of a continent, which warms faster than the global average. At the same time, it is located close to the northeastern part of the Atlantic Ocean, for which most climate models calculate a relatively slow temperature increase. The scenarios with changes in air circulation show a faster warming than the scenarios that do not include such changes.
The four scenarios show a warming by 2050 of 0.9°C up to 2.3°C in winter and 0.9°C up to 2.8°C in summer (Figure 5 and 6). Note that these numbers are with respect to the baseline year 1990 (the average for 1976-2005). The observed temperature rise between 1990 and 2005 is comparatively high: on average more than 0.5°C. This does not mean necessarily that the lowest scenarios for 2050 are too conservative. Also natural fluctuations clearly affect the observed temperature increase. Since these fluctuations will also continue in the future, it is possible that in the coming decades we will temporarily experience a period with relatively colder weather.
Figure 5 Temperature in De Bilt between 1900 and 2005 and the four climate scenarios for 2050 (coloured points). The thick black line represents the 30-year moving average of the observations. The thick coloured and dashed lines connect each climate scenario with the baseline year 1990. The grey band represents the year-to-year variation, derived from the observations.
Figure 6 Map with the observed number of summer days (maximum temperature >= 25°C) per year for 1971-2000, and for four locations in the Netherlands the climate scenarios for 2050. The differences in summer days between the four locations are due to the differences in the current climate.
