UK records hottest summer since 1884 as climate change drives extreme heat

The UK has recorded its hottest summer since records began in 1884, with the June-August mean temperature reaching 16.5°C. The Met Office said climate change made such extreme warmth around 130 times more likely, warning that summers will become hotter and drier

London: Summer 2026 has been declared the UK’s hottest since records began in 1884, according to statistics released by the country’s Meteorological (Met) Office on Tuesday. The experts also cautioned that the season’s high mean temperature was made around 130 times more likely due to human-induced climate change. An average mean temperature, or night-time high, of 16.5 degrees Celsius put the June-August period as the warmest on record, beating the previous seasonal mean high of 16.1 degrees Celsius set last year.

“The conditions we’ve seen this summer have broken UK climate records once again,” said Dr Amy Doherty, who leads the National Climate Information Centre at the UK’s Met Office. “These records are now breaking with increasing frequency, reflecting the influence of human-induced climate change on the temperatures we’re experiencing in the UK.

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“Particularly notable is how much we’ve exceeded the previous summer mean temperature record, set just last year. The figures also knock the infamous summer of 1976 down to seventh for average summer mean temperature, with the top five warmest summers all occurring since 2003,” she said.

The Met Office pointed out that warmth was never far from the headlines in the past three months the peak summer months in the country which followed on the heels of a record-breaking heatwave towards the end of spring in May.

“The UK started meteorological summer with the second warmest June on record, swiftly followed by the second warmest July. While late-August unsettled weather helped ease the temperature figures for that month, the consistency of the warmth through the season has resulted in a new UK summer mean temperature record provisionally being set,” the Met Office stated.

It noted that the “infamous” summer of 1976, which held the previous heatwave records, has been pushed to seventh warmest. Looking solely at average daytime maximum temperatures over the summer months, 2026 has emerged as the warmest on record by surpassing the record set in 1976.

“The summer of 2026 has been remarkable and is an example of the extremes we can expect to see more frequently as a consequence of human-induced climate change,” said Dr Mark McCarthy, Head of Climate Attribution at the Met Office.

“Our analysis shows a summer like the one we’ve just experienced is now around 130 times more likely because of climate change. In a climate unaffected by human emissions of greenhouse gases, a summer like this would be exceptionally unlikely, i.e. one in over 1,000 years.

“In our current climate, which is changing because of the effect of burning of fossil fuels, we should now expect this to be roughly a one in nine-year event,” he said. Daily temperatures peaked in the season at 38.1 degrees Celsius at Kew Gardens on August 13. In total, 54 Met Office weather stations broke their all-time daily maximum temperature record this summer. A rapid climate attribution study conducted by Met Office scientists at the end of summer 2025 warned that the UK could experience even hotter summers in our current climate.

“Just a year later we’re already seeing this play out, with the 2026 summer average temperature 0.40 degrees Celsius higher than 2025, a significant margin for a seasonal temperature,” added McCarthy. Overall, the Met Office climate projections indicate that UK summers will continue to become hotter a trend it stresses is already evident.

Met Office Climate Scientist, Dr James Pope, said: “When looking at the summer we’ve just experienced in relation to our climate projections, we can see that summer 2026 would be around average for a UK summer in a world 2.5 – 3 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial period.

“If emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced and global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, this summer would still be a very hot summer. However, in a world that has warmed by 4 degrees Celsius due to continued emissions, summer 2026 would be considered cool or below average.” He reiterated that this year’s summer will also be remembered for how dry it has been and stated that the Met Office expects “summers to become both hotter and drier in the future”.