The KNMI weather bureau has published a new report outlining the potential impact of a range of severe weather scenarios on the Netherlands, from unprecedented heatwaves to tropical storms and prolonged periods of cold.

The risks themselves are not new, but the report deliberately explores the outer limits of what could realistically occur in the Netherlands. “It is meant to provoke and help us prepare better for crisis situations,” KNMI director general Maarten van Aalst told broadcaster NOS.

The scenarios include a very severe heatwave, weeks of extreme cold, exceptionally heavy rainfall, large-scale wildfires and extremely low water levels in the Rhine.

Other scenarios involve prolonged grey, windless weather leading to very low wind and solar power generation, a tropical storm tracking towards the Netherlands, and a powerful hurricane hitting Bonaire, Saba or St Eustatius.

To construct the scenarios, researchers started with recent extreme events and then introduced small variations into their weather models. Computers ran these models dozens of times to calculate alternative outcomes, each of which is, in principle, equally likely.

One scenario is based on the heatwave that hit the Netherlands in July 2018. In reality, it ended after a few days when cooler air and rain arrived. The models showed that this cooling could also have missed the Netherlands entirely. In that case, the heatwave would have lasted another five days.

Another scenario looks at tropical storm Kirk, which veered away from the Netherlands in 2024 and instead hit Spain and France. According to the models, the storm could also have reached the North Sea.

In that scenario, it would have intensified over the water and then swept across the Netherlands for several hours, with wind speeds of up to 180 kilometres per hour and causing up to €2.7 billion in damage to buildings.

The KNMI currently uses the period 1991–2020 as a comparison to today’s weather but since then the Dutch climate it has already warmed by almost one degree, the agency said.

“This means that weather extremes – which often intensify more strongly than the average – are already markedly different from those of that period,” the KNMI said. “What was once virtually impossible, such as temperatures of 40° in the Netherlands, is now something we need to take into account.”