Met Office issues warning over 40C summers in UK

The UK’s national weather service does not believe 2022’s temperatures were an isolated incident.

The Met Office’s ‘State of the UK Climate’ report for last year revealed every month was warmer than the 1991 to 2020 average, excluding December.

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Lead author Mike Kendon said: “The actual extremes that we're seeing, the highest, the hottest days, those are really increasing markedly too.

“We're going to see very, very many more days, exceeding 30, 32 or 35C. So warmer summers will become very much more frequent, and hot days will become very much more frequent.”

Kendon added: “The heatwave that is happening now across southern Europe, the heatwave that we saw last year, all of these things are fitting into a pattern.

"These things emphasise that our climate is changing. And it's changing now, and it's changing fast."

Fast-moving winds can help why this summer has been wetter as the jet stream can carry across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom.

Professor Liz Bentley, from the Royal Meteorological Society, also said: “I think the jury is out, but there is definitely some science showing that we are getting these much more persistent, static kind of weather patterns, similar to what we've got at the moment with the heatwaves.

“It will be interesting to see if there's conclusive evidence that climate change has led to that.

“And that's going to be a pattern that we see going forward in future.”

A medium emissions scenario gives the UK a one-in-15 chance of hitting 40C in any one year by the end of the century.

The UK experienced significant disruption last summer as mercury soared, including with transport and healthcare.

Soaring temperatures come after the warmest ten-year period on record.

Surface temperatures near the coasts were also the highest for the UK in a series dating back to 1870.

Last year was also one of the least snowy years on record.