Climate extremes the ‘new normal’

We should expect hotter summer temperatures to be normal rather than an out-of-the-ordinary event new climate report suggests.

The number of days of over 30°C has quadrupled in areas such as Greater London. Image: Adobe.

With temperatures climbing in the UK, the latest State of the UK Climate report suggests that climate extremes are now the ‘new normal’.

The report, which covers 2025, places the most recent year and decade within a historical framework and highlights the climate changes already observed in the UK.

A moving climate

Last year was the UK’s warmest on record and marked the sixth time the record was broken since the turn of the century. The period between 2016 and 2025 has been 0.51°C warmer than the period 1991-2020, and 1.33°C warmer than 1961-1990.

“The last four years are all in the top five warmest years. With warming at around 0.25°C per decade since the 1980s, it seems likely this record will be broken again in a matter of years,” said Mike Kendon, Met Office climate information scientist. “What we used to think of as extreme, we increasingly consider as normal.”

The warming is “moving north and uphill,” with areas like the Vale of York and Lancashire now experiencing similar annual temperatures to those seen in Greater London in between 1961 and 1990, Kendon added.

The south-east is also getting warmer and the northern upland areas “are losing the climatologically coldest habitats from the tops of our mountains. Our climate is on the move – literally.”

Kendon said what’s especially concerning is

Original Record.

This archived record authored by ‘Kerry Taylor-Smith’ at ‘METEORED (Your Weather)’ was recovered from data set:

https://www.yourweather.co.uk/news/science/climate-extremes-the-new-normal.html