Met Office verdict on when it will hit 40C amid fears of scorching UK heatwave
Extreme heat and summers hitting 40C are becoming increasingly likely in the UK thanks to climate change. The Met Office has warned that sweltering records and stifling heat are set to become more and more common in the UK.
They are set to release their State of the UK Climate report for 2022 - a year which saw temperatures recorded over 40C for the first time.
Alongside that, it saw dangerous wildfires ravage parts of the country and a record number of deaths related to heat. The report will be released amid an increasingly worrying picture related to climate change. Southern Europe and Northern Africa, as well as parts of Asia are currently experiencing extreme and deadly heat waves.
The warning comes ahead of the Met Office released their State of the UK Climate report for 2022 (PA)Residents on the Greek island of Rhodes, have only been able to watch as their homes go up in flames and holidaymakers desperately flee for their lives. Meanwhile, experts suggested that the heat wave ravaging China can now be expected as often as once every five years thanks to climate change.
The country suffered similarly high temperatures of above 45C. Scientists have warned that these heat waves across the world wouldn’t be possible without climate change, and on top of that, Britain is said to be underprepared for increasingly extreme weather.
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Oli Claydon, from the Met Office, said the 40C milestone is still viewed as an "extreme weather event", PlymouthLive reported, but it is going to be increasingly more likely in the UK as the years go on. He said: "It is evident that the climate is possible to reach 40C in the UK now, as we saw in a number of stations in July last year. The likelihood of exceeding it going forward somewhere in the UK in a given year is now increasing due to human-induced climate change.
"So as well as the need to mitigate against future climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, we’re already experiencing the impacts of climate change now, so there’s already a need to adapt to the types of weather extremes that we can see in the UK."
Dr Candice Howarth, of the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said 2022 was “very significant” for the UK climate after temperatures hit 40C for the first time. She said: "The 2022 heatwaves would not have been possible without climate change. We know that the July heatwave was extremely rare, a one-in-1,000-year event , and was made 10 times more likely due to anthropogenic climate change."
Dr Howarth also said the UK is not prepared for extreme heat, adding that local authorities, emergency services and utility companies "only just managed to respond" to the record 2022 summer temperatures.
She said: "If the Government fails to show more leadership in preparing for these extreme heat events, then we are likely to see a rise in heat-related deaths, wider impacts on workers’ health and productivity, and increasing rates of overheating in UK homes and buildings that are ill-equipped to stay cool in the summer."
Sir David King, chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, said the average temperature in Europe in 2022 was "actually a little bit cooler" than 2021 but there is still a longer-term trend of warming. He said: "It’s important that we understand (to) look at it on a two, three, four-year basis and you’ll see the trend very clearly.”
On what the UK should do to prepare for warmer weather, he said: "The most important thing is we need to try to understand as well as we can what the Met Office is telling us about our own weather systems and what precautions need to be taken in our own houses because if it’s extremely hot, you ought to keep out of the sunshine, but it doesn’t help if indoors it is very, very warm. We don’t have to have air conditioning but moving air is critical – just to get the perspiration off our skin. That’s how we cool ourselves down."
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