UK records hottest summer since 1884 as climate change drives extreme heat

London,UPDATED: Sep 1, 2026 21:18 IST

Summer 2026 has been declared the UK’s hottest summer since records began in 1884, according to figures released by the Met Office on Tuesday. The June to August period recorded an average mean temperature of 16.5 degrees Celsius, making it the warmest summer on record and beating the previous high of 16.1 degrees Celsius set last year.

The Met Office said the season’s high temperatures were made around 130 times more likely by human-induced climate change. It said the warmth was a consistent feature through the summer months, after a record-breaking heatwave at the end of spring in May.

Dr Amy Doherty, who leads the Climate Information Centre at the Met Office, said, "The conditions we’ve seen this summer have broken UK climate records once again. These records are now breaking with increasing frequency, reflecting the influence of human-induced climate change on the temperatures we’re experiencing in the UK. Particularly notable is how much we’ve exceeded the previous summer mean temperature record, set just last year. The figures also knock the infamous summer of 1976 down to seventh for average summer mean temperature, with the top five warmest summers all occurring since 2003."

The Met Office said, "The UK started meteorological summer with the second warmest June on record, swiftly followed by the second warmest July. While late-August unsettled weather helped ease the temperature figures for that month, the consistency of the warmth through the season has resulted in a new UK summer mean temperature record provisionally being set." It added that while the summer of 1976 has now dropped to the seventh warmest by average summer mean temperature, 2026 was the warmest on record when only average daytime maximum temperatures for the summer months were considered, surpassing the 1976 record.

Daily temperatures peaked at 38.1 degrees Celsius at Kew Gardens on August 13. In all, 54 Met Office weather stations set their all-time daily maximum temperature record this summer.

Dr Mark McCarthy, Head of Climate Attribution at the Met Office, said, "The summer of 2026 has been remarkable and is an example of the extremes we can expect to see more frequently as a consequence of human-induced climate change. Our analysis shows a summer like the one we’ve just experienced is now around 130 times more likely because of climate change. In a climate unaffected by human emissions of greenhouse gases, a summer like this would be exceptionally unlikely, i.e. one in over 1,000 years. In our current climate, which is changing because of the effect of burning of fossil fuels, we should now expect this to be roughly a one in nine-year event." He added that a rapid climate attribution study by Met Office scientists at the end of summer 2025 had warned that the UK could face even hotter summers in the current climate. "Just a year later we’re already seeing this play out, with the 2026 summer average temperature 0.40 degrees Celsius higher than 2025, a significant margin for a seasonal temperature," McCarthy said.

Met Office Climate Scientist Dr James Pope said the latest summer matched what climate projections suggest for a much warmer world. "When looking at the summer we’ve just experienced in relation to our climate projections, we can see that summer 2026 would be around average for a UK summer in a world 2.5 - 3 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial period. If emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced and global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, this summer would still be a very hot summer. However, in a world that has warmed by 4 degrees Celsius due to continued emissions, summer 2026 would be considered cool or below average." He also said this summer would be remembered for how dry it was, and that the Met Office expected summers "to become both hotter and drier in the future".

The Met Office said its climate projections continued to point to hotter UK summers, a trend it said was already visible. This year’s summer set a new benchmark in the records, pushed older heatwave years further down the rankings and, according to the agency’s scientists, showed the growing impact of climate change on the country’s weather.

With PTI Inputs

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