Summer 2025 ‘Almost Certainly’ UK’s Warmest on Record As Experts Warn Extreme Heat Becoming the Norm

At present, mean temperature in the UK is tracking at 16.13C, much higher than the current record of 15.76C, set in 2018, according to the Met Office, adding that this summer will be “almost certainly” the warmest on record for the country.

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This summer is on track to be the UK’s hottest since record-keeping began in 1884, the national weather forecaster said on Tuesday.

“Provisional Met Office statistics show that summer 2025 will almost certainly be the warmest summer on record,” said Met Office Scientist Emily Carlisle. The mean temperature between June 1 and August 25 stood at 16.13C, the scientist said, well above the 2018 record of 15.76C and 1.54C above the long-term meteorological average.

“[U]nless temperatures are around four degrees below average for the rest of August – which the forecast does not suggest – it looks like the current record will be exceeded,” Carlisle added.

The UK has experienced four intense heatwaves so far this summer, although none have reached record-breaking daily temperature levels. The maximum temperature recorded was 35.8C in Faversham, Kent, far off the UK’s all-time high of 40.3C recorded in 2022, the weather forecaster said.

Climate Change

It follows one of the UK’s driest springs on record, which has depleted reservoir levels and dried out grounds across the country. This, unusually warm seas around the UK, and high-pressure systems have created the perfect conditions for heat to develop quickly and linger, according to the Met Office. It added that with human-driven climate change, summers like this are only going to become hotter and drier.

Scientists have warned that temperature extremes in the UK are becoming “the norm”. The UK climate has been warming at a rate of approximately 0.25C per decade since the 1980s. The last three years are also among the country’s five warmest on record. The country has also become 8% sunnier in the last 10 years.

Ahead of a heatwave in June, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group warned that there is now a 100-times higher likelihood of having June days with temperatures above 32C in today’s climate, which is 1.3C warmer than pre-industrial times. It added that the country is “lagging behind” on adaptation and heatwaves remain an “overlooked threat”.

“It is totally insane we have political leaders in the UK trying to drag us back to the past with calls for more fossil fuels,” Friederike Otto, WWA’s Co-Founder and Associate Professor in Climate Science at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, said in June.

The burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the single-largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are the primary drivers of global warming as they trap heat in the atmosphere and raise Earth’s surface temperature.

“The climate will continue to drive increasingly dangerous heatwaves, fires and floods in the UK until emissions are reduced to net zero globally,” Otto added.

Featured image: Alisdare Hickson/Flickr.