‘Unprecedented’ changes in UK climate are normalising extremes, report says | Climate crisis

Extreme climate conditions in the UK are becoming increasingly normal, with last year’s hottest on record and further “unprecedented changes” set to break the record again soon, a report has revealed.

According to the annual UK Climate report, data dating back to 1884 shows the UK has never experienced a year as warm as 2025; Temperatures are reaching dizzying levels due to carbon pollution clogging the atmosphere.

While the country experienced the hottest spring and summer on record last year, England experienced the driest spring of the last century.

The report comes as Britain faces its third deadly heatwave to ravage Europe in the last two months. The Met Office on Tuesday said the UK would record as many 30C (86F) days in 2026 as it did in the exceptionally hot year 1976.

“We increasingly consider normal things we once thought were extreme,” said Mike Kendon, a scientist at the National Center for Climate Information and lead author of the report. “We see unprecedented changes continuing… and each year the evidence mounts.”

The report, published in the International Journal of Climatology on Wednesday, found that the last four years in the UK were among the five warmest on record, with higher averages resulting from climate disruption making dangerous extreme temperatures even hotter.

The report found that in an area stretching from Kent in the south-east to Lincolnshire in the East Midlands, the average warmest day of the year was 4.5°C (8.1°F) warmer in the last decade than in the period 1961-1990. The number of days above 30°C and nights above 18°C ​​in Greater London has more than quadrupled over the same period.

Colder northern parts of the country are now experiencing temperatures that London experienced decades ago, scientists say

“Our climate is literally in motion,” Kendon said. “The trend shows that an average annual temperature of 11C was virtually unknown in the UK in the 1980s, but by 2025 almost a fifth of the land surface will reach this value.”

Warm air can hold about 7% more moisture for every degree Celsius of warming, resulting in more precipitation, making it more likely to lead to floods. The report revealed that the number of rainiest days has increased by more than 20 percent since the period 1961-1990, while the intensity of precipitation has increased by 5 percent.

While the UK’s climate is becoming wetter overall, punishing droughts amid hot, dry summers are expected to worsen as average temperatures rise further. According to the report, much of England and Wales in spring 2025 received less than half the average rainfall for the same period in 1991-2020. Britain’s river flow from March to August 2025 was the second lowest recorded in a data set dating back to 1961.

Liz Bentley, president of the Royal Meteorological Society, said: “The way we most experience climate change is through extreme weather. Climate change has been described by scientists for many years but is now increasingly being felt by the UK population in their own homes and communities.”

Persistent hot and dry weather has created conditions for wildfires to spread. Fire services have been struggling to contain fires in recent days as experts warn the country is in the grip of a “fire wave”.

The third heat wave of the year, expected to reach 33 degrees on Wednesday, was longer but milder than the one that hit at the end of June, straining hospitals, disrupting travel and forcing schools to close. A separate analysis published on Sunday found that May and June heatwaves killed nearly 2,700 people in England and Wales.

“Much of our infrastructure, our housing stock, our agricultural and healthcare systems rely on a climate that is no longer represented by recent observations,” Kendon said. “One final point, if you find that sobering enough, is that these changes will continue. We’re not saying where we are now is where we’ll stay.”