Climate change ‘driving UK’s extreme weather’ and temperature records, Met Office warns

Last year saw a string of temperature records broken as climate change continues to heat Britain up, the Met Office has warned.

The hottest temperature ever recorded came in July last year, when Cambridge University Botanic Gardens reached 38.7C.

And a new publication by the Met Office, its annual State of the UK Climate report, published on what was due to be the hottest day of the year, has laid out a series of other records broken in 2019, all of which confirm the UK is getting hotter and hotter.

Last year also saw the hottest ever winter temperature of 21.2C, measured at Kew Gardens in London on 26 February.

And the mildest February day on record was logged last year, when the lowest temperature was only 13.9C, at Achnagart in the Scottish Highlands on 23 February.

The hottest ever December day was 28 December 2019, when the mercury soared to 18.7C at Achfary, also in the Highlands.

Although 2019 was only the 12th warmest year on average since records began, its average temperatures were still 1.1C higher than the long-term trends from 1961 to 1990.

All of the 10 warmest years on record have come since 2002, and one data series for central England which stretches back even further to 1659 shows the 21^st century has been warmer than the three preceding centuries.

“Our report shows climate change is exerting an increasing impact on the UK’s climate,” said Mike Kendon, the report’s lead author from the Met Office.

“This year was warmer than any other year in the UK between 1884 and 1990, and since 2002 we have seen the warmest 10 years in the series.

“By contrast, to find a year in the coldest 10 we have to go back to 1963 – over 50 years ago.”

Climate change was not just having a warming impact but was also making other kinds of weather more extreme, the Met Office reported.

Last year saw significant flooding across Britain, including in Lincolnshire, the Pennines, South Yorkshire, and the East Midlands.

Dr Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, said 2019 was the latest in a series of especially wet years, and for northern England marked the ninth most rainfall in a year since records began in 1862.

“It’s worth noting that since 2009 the UK has now had its wettest February, April, June, November and December on record – five out of 12 months,” he told the BBC.

Professor Richard Allan, a climate scientist from the University of Reading, said: “The record hot days and sticky nights observed in the UK during 2019 are an expected result of a warming climate that is intensifying heatwaves as well as heavy rainfall events, whenever they occur.

“What is not captured in these reports are the remote consequences of climate change that are increasingly affecting our country through effects on global food prices, environmental degradation and national security.”

Dr Friederike Otto, from the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, said the Met Office report was just another piece of evidence which showed how climate change could already be felt in British weather.

“For heatwaves, climate change is a real game changer. Rapid analysis from the World Weather Attribution initiative showed that the record-breaking 38.7C heat in Cambridgeshire in 2019 was made at least twice as likely due to climate change.”

As the UK’s warming continued, we should expect to see more and more heatwaves, as well as both droughts and floods, as a result of climate change, she warned.

“Climate change isn’t happening gracefully,” said Professor Martin Siegert from Imperial College London. “The weather records that have been broken inform us to expect more records as global warming continues; more heatwaves and droughts, more rainfall and floods, and more snow and icy-cold blasts.

“The longer we leave it until we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, the worse our future weather is likely to be.”