Previous heat high passed 30 times in a day
MORE than 30 places in England broke the previous national heat record yesterday, the Met Office said.
Weather stations across the Midlands, East and South East recorded temperatures higher than the 38.7C (102F) measured in Cambridge Botanic Garden in 2019.
The previous hottest day was provisionally broken by 1.6 degrees, the Met Office said, with a high of 40.3C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, becoming the hottest temperature recorded in the UK.
The national record has been broken with increasing frequency in recent years. The 36.7C recorded in August 1911 in Northamptonshire was the record high for almost 80 years until 1990, when 37.1C was reached in Cheltenham. Yesterday marked the third time that heat records had been broken in 20 years, with 2019’s high superseding a 2003 reading of 38.5C in Faversham, Kent.
Regional records also fell, with Scotland recording a new maximum of 34.8C, up from 32.9C set in 2003, while on Monday Wales broke its record of 35.2C with a reading of 37.1C set in Hawarden, Flintshire. Scientists said the margins by which records were being broken were unusual, with new highs set over a degree hotter than previous readings.
Prof Hannah Cloke, natural hazards researcher at the University of Reading, said: “The all-time temperature record for the UK has not just been broken, it has been absolutely obliterated. The mark of 39C will never even exist as a UK temperature record, because we have just soared past it into the 40s in a single sweaty leap.”
She added that this was not unprecedented, and in North America record temperatures last year exceeded previous highest levels of heat by five degrees in some locations.
“We know from our understanding of how the atmosphere interacts with the land and vegetation that once heat begins to build up in conditions such as those we are experiencing, it can build and build in a vicious cycle of heating,” she said. “Add to that a plume of hot air exported from the Sahara, and a background warming of the planet due to greenhouse gases building up, and you’ve got all the conditions for record- breaking UK temperatures.”
On Monday night a new highest minimum temperature was also set, making it the hottest night on record, with temperatures never dropping below 25.8C in Kenley in Surrey.
Scientists said the new records were fuelled by climate change, with the planet around 1.1C hotter now than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
Dann Mitchell, professor of climate science at the University of Bristol and Met Office joint chair in climate hazards, said: “Even in our current climate a record breaker of above 40C is thought to be extremely rare, but as our climate warms we expect to see these kinds of exceedances every couple of years.”