UK faces days of sweltering 40C heat by end of century under climate shift
The risk of days with sweltering 40C heat in the UK could rise significantly by the end of the century without action to drive down greenhouse gas emissions, the Met Office has warned.
Climate change caused by human activity is already pushing the mercury to new record highs, with 38.7C in
Cambridge in July last year the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK.
Those new records prompt the question of whether 40C heat is on the horizon for the UK, with heatwaves posing a potentially severe risk to people’s health.
Researchers at the Met Office Hadley Centre have used a detailed local-scale dataset based on observations to assess the likelihood of future hot spells in the face of high or medium levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions from activities such as burning fossil fuels which heat up the planet, has put the UK on a course to see extremes that would be highly unlikely under a “natural” climate, the scientists said. Currently the chances of temperatures reaching 40C anywhere in the
UK are extremely low. If emissions continue at high levels, worsening climate change, the UK could see days with 40C heat every three to four years on average by 2100, the study published in the journal Nature Communications found.
Temperatures exceeding 35C occur once every five years on average, but that could rise to every other year with high emissions.
The scientists said if the world took action on emissions in line with commitments in the international Paris Agreement to limit temperature rises to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels, the risk of extreme heat would be much lower.
The south-east of the UK is more likely to see 40C temperatures, while 35C temperatures are becoming increasingly common in the region.