•Europe’s searing heatwave is generating very high levels of harmful ozone pollution
Britain sweltered through its hottest summer on record this year, the UK’s meteorological agency announced today, the latest in a string of global temperature records.
“Provisional Met Office statistics show that summer 2025 is officially the warmest on record with a mean temperature of 16.10C, surpassing the previous record of 15.76C set in 2018,” Met Office scientist Emily Carlisle said in a statement.
Scientists have warned persistently that human-driven climate change is resulting in more frequent and intense weather events worldwide, reports AFP.
In Britain, “the persistent warmth this year has been driven by a combination of factors including the domination of high-pressure systems, unusually warm seas around the UK and the dry spring soils,” Carlisle said.
“These conditions have created an environment where heat builds quickly and lingers, with both maximum and minimum temperatures considerably above average.”
The provisional 2025 record means all of Britain’s five warmest summers have taken place in the 21st century.
The Met Office noted “a summer as hot or hotter than 2025 is now 70 times more likely than it would be in a ‘natural’ climate with no human caused greenhouse gas emissions”.
It comes as the UK saw its warmest and sunniest spring in over a century, with England also experiencing the warmest spring on record.
Britain, known for its damp and grey climate, then sweltered through four separate heatwaves during the summer months, posing a host of challenges.
Homes in the UK are designed to keep the heat in during the winter, and are often not equipped to handle prolonged warm periods.
Air conditioners are a rare feature as well, and remain an expensive and largely inaccessible technology.
Researchers at Loughborough University warned that around 20 percent of UK homes are overheating and posing a health risk to inhabitants.
“Oh my God. I think there’s no air conditioner in our dorm. It is sometimes very hot, and especially in public transport,” Ruidi Luan, a 26-year-old student from China, told our correspondent in London during the latest heatwave in August.
“I think it’s hard to spend a hot day.”
Nearly half the responders to a survey by charity Citizens Advice reported difficulty sleeping during the summer, with 11 percent experiencing their health deteriorating due to overheating homes.
Drought was declared in five out of 14 regions in England, which experienced its driest first six months in half a century this year.
A water shortfall in England was classed as “nationally significant” by the Environment Agency in August, with farmers struggling with stunted harvests.
Reservoir levels across England were below average in August, nearly 50 percent of river flows were below normal, and bans on hosepipe use were enforced in some of the worst-affected regions.
One village which was deliberately flooded in 1939 to create a reservoir for the northwestern hub of Manchester re-emerged in May due to the lack of rain.
