No year has been hotter, wetter and sunnier than 2020

UK is changing to warmer climate that holds more moisture with frequent extremes and less snow

LAST year was among the wettest, hottest and sunniest on record, the Met Office has said, as it warned extremes will become more common. The annual

State of the UK Climate report found 2020 was the first ever in the top 10 in all three categories of rain, sun and high temperature.

In The Royal Meteorological Society International Journal of Climatology, the paper warned that “recent decades have been warmer, wetter and sunnier than the 20th century”.

Last year was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest recorded for the UK. Heatwaves and bursts of heavy rain are becoming more common, with snow days less likely, reflecting a warmer climate which can hold more moisture. Lead author Mike Kendon, a senior climate scientist, said: “Our climate is changing, and it is changing now. And that is something that we see clearly in our observations.

“We’re going to see more of that, moving into the future.”

Spring 2020 was the sunniest spring on record, included the sunniest April and May, and was also sunnier than most UK summers have been.

Six of the 10 wettest years for the UK have occurred since 1998, and the decade to 2020 was on average nine per cent wetter than the period from 1961 to 1990. Two of the three wettest days on record happened last year, with Oct 3 seeing the most rainfall in a single day and Feb 15 the third-most. Aug 25 1986 comes second.

Records for rainfall go back to 1862, temperature to 1884 and sunshine to 1919. A second measure for central England, going back to 1659, found 2020 was also the third-warmest year since then.

UK land temperature in the past decade has been 1.1C (34F) warmer than 1961-1990, meaning the UK is warming slightly more quickly than the global average, the report said, which is a rise of 0.8C.

One positive trend due to the changing climate could be a reduction in extreme snow, which can cause flooding as it melts, Mr Kendon added.

2018’s Beast from the East, which caused chaos for several days in February and March, would have been a more common event in the past, he said.

“We have had some severe weather relatively recently. But an event like that would have been much more normal in the winters of the 1980s.

“And indeed, we’ve seen nothing in recent years as severe as Jan 1963, Feb 1947. So in general, we would broadly expect impacts from snow, although we may still get them overall, to decline.”

Prof Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, said: “This report is clearly evidence that climate change is already happening and on our doorstep with extremes having impacts on us as humans.”