The UK is in the midst of a spring heatwave, with temperatures in parts of the country hitting 35.1°C.
As Brits struggle to find relief, scientists have blamed climate change for the blistering heat.
Professor Friederike Otto, Professor of Climate Science at Imperial College London, said: ‘This record–breaking heat has the fingerprints of climate change all over it.
‘Temperatures on this scale were once exceptional even at the height of summer.
‘Seeing 35°C in the UK during spring is absolutely astonishing, but the science is very clear – climate change makes these heatwaves hotter, longer, and far more frequent.’
Looking ahead, Dr Otto warns that these spring heatwaves could become the norm, unless urgent action is taken to curb climate change.
‘The climate we are living in today is simply not the one we grew up with, and our buildings and infrastructure are woefully unprepared for what’s next,’ she added.
‘While we have made some progress in cutting emissions, it is not fast enough. Temperature records will continue to tumble until we fundamentally halt global emissions and reach net zero.’
Data released by the Met Office confirms that the May and spring UK temperature records were broken not just once, but twice this week
The UK is in the midst of a spring heatwave, with temperatures in parts of the country hitting 35.1°C. As Brits struggle to find relief, scientists have blamed climate change for the blistering heat
Data released by the Met Office confirms that the May and spring UK temperature records were broken not just once, but twice this week.
A temperature of 34.8°C was recorded on Monday at Kew Gardens, before a reading of 35.1°C was taken at the same site yesterday.
The previous record was 32.8°C which was reached in 1922 and 1944.
Gareth Redmond–King, Head of International at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, called these new records ‘deeply worrying’.
He said: ‘To break one extreme weather record in the space of a couple of days is one thing, but breaking them each day and night in succession, and by such a margin, is deeply worrying.
‘The hottest May day in the UK is now more than two degrees higher than it was last week – and had been for more than 80 years – and our sleep is being disrupted by tropical spring nights.
‘As recent heatwaves here and around Europe have shown, dangerous extremes cause harm and cost lives, posing a particular risk to elderly people and very young children.
‘If we want to avoid worse extremes becoming the norm, then science has the answer – cutting our planet–heating emissions to net zero is the only way we know to halt climate change.’
It’s a question being asked across social media amid the UK heatwave: why does heat in the UK ‘hit different’?
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Dr Laurence Wainwright, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford revealed just how hot the UK could get if climate change isn’t curbed.
‘Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that human-induced climate change is already, and will continue to, result in the UK getting hotter,’ he explained.
‘Average temperatures will go up, our summers will be warmer and longer, hot weather will sometimes start earlier (e.g. May rather than July), and heatwaves – periods where there are consecutive days of the temperature being above the normal highest ranges for a certain area – will be more frequent.
‘Scientific modelling predicts that by 2070, summer temperatures in the UK will be on average 5°C hotter than today.
‘While perhaps 2070 sounds far away, and 5°C doesn’t sound like much, it is starting already, and will as the years go by have a profound impact on the way that we live our lives.’
