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

The UK’s climatic extremes are becoming increasingly normal, a report has found, with last year the hottest on record and further “unprecedented changes” likely to break the record again soon.Data stretching back to 1884 shows the UK has never experienced a year as hot as 2025, according to the annual State of the UK Climate report, with temperatures pushed to dizzying heights by carbon pollution clogging the atmosphere.The country experienced its warmest spring and summer on record last year, while England was hit by its driest spring in a century.The report comes as the UK faces the third deadly heatwave to have scorched Europe over the last two months. On Tuesday, the Met Office said the UK had already recorded as many 30C (86F) days in 2026 as in the extraordinarily hot year of 1976.“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.”The report, published on Wednesday in the International Journal of Climatology, found the last four years in the UK 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 (8.1F) 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 the country 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 7% 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% since the 1961-1990 period, while rainfall intensity has risen by 5%.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile the UK’s climate is becoming wetter overall, punishing droughts amid hot and dry summers are expected to worsen as average temperatures increase 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.”Persistent hot and dry weather has created conditions for wildfires to spread. Fire services have struggled to contain blazes in recent days as experts warned the country was in the grip of a “firewave”.The third heatwave of the year, which is forecast to reach highs of up to 33C on Wednesday, has been longer but milder than the one that struck in late June and which overwhelmed hospitals, disrupted travel and forced schools to close. A separate analysis published on Sunday found that the May and June heatwaves killed about 2,700 people in England and Wales.“A lot of our infrastructure, housing stock, agriculture and health systems are based on a climate that is no longer represented by recent observations,” said Kendon. “A final point, if you find this sobering enough, is these changes are set to continue. We’re not saying that where we are now is where we’re going to stay.”