NOS weather forecaster Peter Kuipers Munneke:
The fact that it is so warm so north is partly due to the jet stream. The boundary between warm air from the south and cool air from the north, as it were, meanders across the northern hemisphere. Sometimes the most northern bend is above Europe, such as at the time of the heat records in the Netherlands two years ago, and sometimes over Canada, like now. It is not a question of whether we will get heat more often, but where exactly.
We will see this heat more often, as a result of global warming. Rare heat extremes are becoming less rare. This is going very fast: the number of extremely hot days is increasing faster than the increase in the average temperature.
It’s happening even faster than scientists expected. This may be due to the drying out of the soil and vegetation: when it is warm somewhere, the forests and the soil dry out and they subsequently heat up extra.
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