This year has been extremely warm with the average temperature equalling that of 2023 at 11.8°, the KNMI weather bureau said on Monday.

This means 2023 and 2024 are both the warmest years since official records began in 1901, the KNMI said.

The high temperature comes as a surprise because for many this summer was grey and damp, and July and August were chillier than average, the KNMI said. However, the other 10 months were warmer than usual and that has pushed the average up into the record-breaking category.

The repeat of last year’s record is in line with research by the European weather service Copernicus which warned in November that global warming had topped 1.5 degrees, compared with the pre-industrial era.

The Netherlands, says the KNMI’s Karin van der Wiel, is warming up more quickly than average. “One of the reasons is that the Netherlands is land, not an ocean. The land is warming up more quickly than the seas.”

The latest edition of the climate stripes system developed by British climate scientist Ed Hawkins in 2018 illustrates how global warming is taking hold in the Netherlands, the KNMI said.

The barcode type image turns a location’s annual climate data into a row of coloured stripes, showing each year compared with the previous. The darker the colour, the bigger the difference from average.