Extreme climate conditions across the UK are becoming the new normal according to scientists and Britain’s infrastructure, food supplies and health facilities are no longer fit for purpose as temperatures soar.
An alarming report studied data stretching back to 1884 and showed the country has never before experienced a year as hot as 2025.
The annual State of the UK Climate report notes the warmest spring and summer on record, and the Met Office has already recorded as many as 30C days in 2026 as in the heatwave year of 1976.
The study was released as figures show the heatwave that hit England and Wales in June killed about 440 people a day during its three-day peak.
Scientists say across the whole of June, plus the period of high temperatures in May, about 2,700 people across Britain lost their lives prematurely.
‘What we used to think of as extreme, we increasingly consider as normal,’ said Mike Kendon, a scientist at the National Climate Information Centre and lead author of the report.
‘We are seeing unprecedented changes continuing and every year adds to this body of evidence.
‘A lot of our infrastructure, housing stock, agriculture and health systems are based on a climate that is no longer represented by recent observations.
‘A final point is these changes are set to continue. We’re not saying that where we are now is where we’re going to stay.’
Britain’s record-breaking heat
The report, published in the International Journal of Climatology, found the last four years in Britain were among the top five hottest on record, with higher averages from climate breakdown making dangerous extremes hotter.
In an area stretching from Kent in the south-east to Lincolnshire in the East Midlands, the average hottest day of the year was 4.5C warmer in the last decade than in 1961-1990, the report found.
In Greater London, the number of days over 30C and nights over 18C more than quadrupled over the same period.
Colder northern parts of Britain were now experiencing temperatures that London had decades ago, the scientists said.
‘Our climate is on the move – literally,’ said Kendon. ‘The trend shows that in the 1980s, annual average temperatures of 11C were virtually unknown in the UK, yet by 2025 almost a fifth of the land surface reached that value.’
Warm air can hold about seven per cent more moisture for each degree Celsius of warming, allowing for heavier rainfall, which is more likely to lead to floods. The report found the number of the very wettest days has risen by more than 20 per cent since the 1961-1990 period, while rainfall intensity has risen by five per cent.
While Britain’s climate is becoming wetter overall, droughts during hot summers are expected to worsen as average temperatures rise further.
In spring 2025, most of England and Wales received less than half of the average rainfall for the same period in 1991-2020, the report found. England’s river flow from March to August 2025 was the second lowest on record in a dataset that goes back to 1961.
Liz Bentley, the head of the Royal Meteorological Society, said: ‘The way we experience climate change most is through the weather extremes.
‘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.’
