‘Profound concern’ as scientists say extreme heat ‘now the norm’ in UK | Climate crisis

The extreme record time is the new standard in the United Kingdom, said scientists, showing that the country is firmly in the grip of the climate crisis.

The hottest days that people endure have increased considerably in frequency and severity, and periods of intense rain have also increased, data from hundreds of weather stations show. Heat waves and floods resulting in costly deaths and damage are “deeply worrying” for health, infrastructure and the functioning of society, scientists said.

Meteorological recordings clearly show that the United Kingdom’s climate is now different from a few decades ago, scientists said, following carbon pollution emitted by the combustion of fossil combustibles.

The analysis revealed that the number of days with temperatures 5C above the average for 1961-1990 had doubled in the past 10 years. During the 8C days above the average, the number tripled and for 10 ° C above the average, it quadrupled. The United Kingdom has also become 8% sunny in the last decade.

The evaluation also indicated that the rain had become more intense. The number of months when counties receive at least double the average precipitation has increased by 50% in the last 20 years. A large part of the additional rain falls in the months of October to March. This period in 2023-24 was the humid of all time, in the files dating back to 1767, and resulted in floods in the Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, the West Midlands and elsewhere.

The sea level around the United Kingdom increases more quickly than the global average, according to the report, which worsens the impact of coastal floods.

Six hundred people are said to have died due to the heat wave that hit England and Wales at the end of June. Flood temperatures have been made 100 times more likely by global heating, calculated scientists. Two other heat waves followed in rapid succession.

Government preparations to protect people from climbing the impacts of the climate crisis were condemned as “inadequate, fragmentary and disjointed” by official advisers in April.

Mike Kendon at the Met Office, who directed the analysis, said: “frequently breaking records and seeing these extremes, this is now the norm. We may not notice the change from one year to another, but if we look back 10 years or 30 years, we can see very big changes. We are going apart from the envelope of what we have known in the past. ”

“The extremes have the greatest impact for our society, if we think of our infrastructure, our public health and our functioning,” he said. “So it’s really a deep concern.”

The evaluation, entitled The State of the UK Climate 2024 and published in the International Journal of Climatology, noted that the last three years were in the first five warmer years of the United Kingdom. The hottest spring ever recorded was seen in 2024, although this has already been exceeded in 2025.

The United Kingdom has particularly long weather records and the central temperature series of England is the longest instrumental record in the world. It shows that recent temperatures have far exceeded every 300 years at least 300 years. However, today’s high temperatures are likely to be average by 2050 and to cool to 2100, scientists said.

The sea level around the United Kingdom has already increased by 19 cm in the last century, while glaciers and ice caps melted and the oceans absorb heat and develop. The climb accelerates and is higher around the United Kingdom than in the world, although scientists do not determine why. It could increase up to 200 cm by the end of the century, Dr. Svetlana Jenvrejeva told the National Oceanography Center.

Temporal winds can push overvoltages of seawater on the ribs and are the most dangerous when they coincide with the highest tides. “The additional sea level increase [due to global heating] leads to an increase in the frequency of extreme sea levels and an intensification of coastal dangers, “said Jevrejeva.” This is only a matter of time until the United Kingdom is the next on the way to a major event on storm waves. “”

While heat recordings are more and more broken, cold events become less common. For example, days with air frosts have dropped 14 per year in the last decade, compared to the average of 1931-1990.

The modified climate of the United Kingdom has also affected nature, according to the report. The first Nichages Frogspawn and Blackbird were observed in 2024, in recordings which started in 1999. All the 13 natural events except one were earlier than the average in 2024, from the first less important celandine flower to the first leaves of Elder. Changes mean species that depend on others, as for food or pollination, are likely to synchronize, said Dr. Judith Garform at Woodland Trust.

Professor Liz Bentley, at the Royal Meteorological Society, said that the report showed the urgent need to make the United Kingdom resilient in extreme time by the climate: “This report is not only a record for change, but a call for action.”