Britain has experienced its warmest summer since records began in 1884 and is now more likely to see similar hot weather in the future due to human-induced climate change, the Met Office weather forecaster said on Monday.
Countries worldwide have experienced record-breaking heat in recent years as global warming intensifies, with the summer of 2024 now considered the world’s hottest on record.
In Europe, sweltering heatwaves this summer contributed to deadly wildfires in countries such as Spain and Portugal.
Britain’s summer months of June, July and August saw a mean temperature this year of 16.10 degrees Celsius (60.98 degrees Fahrenheit) – surpassing a 2018 record of 15.76 C, the Met Office said. The summer 2025 mean is 1.51 C above the long-term meteorological average.
“Our analysis shows that the summer of 2025 has been made much more likely because of the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution,” head of climate attribution at the Met Office, Mark McCarthy, said.
“We could plausibly experience much hotter summers in our current and near-future … what would have been seen as extremes in the past are becoming more common in our changing climate.”
Britain saw four heatwaves this summer, with the highest temperature of 35.8 C recorded in Faversham, southeast England. This peak was lower than the UK’s all-time high of 40.3 C in the summer of 2022.
(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar）
