More tropical nights, warm spells and hotter days

Warm spells and tropical nights are on the rise in the UK as the climate changes, a report from the Met Office focusing on weather extremes reveals.

The duration of warm spells, when temperatures are well above average for the time of year, has more than doubled between the periods 1961 -1990 and 2008 to 2017, the report which tracks trends since the 1960s shows.

Scorching summer days are getting hotter, with the hottest day of each year in the most recent decade on average 0.8C warmer than each year’s hottest days in the period 19611990.

And the chilliest extremes of the year are not quite as biting as they were in the past, with the lowest temperature of the year 1.7C milder in the last decade than it was in the three decades up to 1990.

Tropical nights – where minimum temperatures do not fall below 20C (68F) – are still rare in the UK, and are largely confined to southern England.

But they are being included in the report on temperature and rainfall extremes as they are likely to become more common in the future as climate change becomes more pronounced.

The data show that while the 1976 heatwave is one of the most significant heatwaves for the UK, tropical nights only really start to stand out after 1995.

Between 2008 and 2017 a cluster of tropical nights are recorded in the South East, the Midlands and South Wales.

Dr Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre which produced the report,