UK Met Office: The Climate of the 20th Century Has Disappeared in the United Kingdom

London – 15 July 2026: The climate of the 20th century no longer exists in the United Kingdom, according to the UK Met Office. The report “State of the UK Climate 2025,” published on Wednesday, places the past year and the most recent decade in the context of long-term records. Temperature extremes, warm nights, sea surface temperatures and the distribution of precipitation are changing particularly markedly.

According to the Met Office, 2025 was the warmest year in the UK’s record series, which dates back to 1884. At the same time, each of the past four years ranked among the five warmest ever recorded. The decade from 2016 to 2025 was on average 1.33 degrees warmer than the 1961 to 1990 reference period. Since the 1980s, the United Kingdom has warmed by around 0.25 degrees per decade on average.

The trend is especially apparent in extreme heat. In an area stretching from Kent to Lincolnshire, the average warmest day of the year in the 2016 to 2025 decade was more than 4.5 degrees warmer than between 1961 and 1990. In Greater London, the number of days above 30 degrees and nights above 18 degrees each increased more than fourfold in the comparison between these periods.

Lead climate scientist Mike Kendon said that weather conditions once considered exceptional are increasingly being perceived as normal. Even during historic hot summers such as 1976, temperatures of at least 30 degrees across the entire United Kingdom were comparatively rare in the 20th century. Today, temperatures of 35 degrees are regularly expected in some places during summer heat spells. This affects households, cities, agriculture and health preparedness.

The report also documents a sharp warming of the surrounding seas. In 2025, a total of 297 marine heatwave days were recorded in the waters of northwestern Europe and the northeastern Atlantic. This was the highest figure since the comparative record began in 1982 and significantly exceeded the previous record of 178 days in 2023. Warmer seas can affect air temperatures on land and place stress on marine ecosystems.

The data also show contrasting risks in the water balance. River flows in England were at their second-lowest level since 1961 from March to August 2025; only the summer of 1976 was drier. At the same time, the winter half-year of the past decade was wetter than the reference periods. Since 1901, sea levels around the United Kingdom have risen by around 20.1 centimetres, with two-thirds of this increase occurring over the past three decades.