Reuters, London
Recent decades in Britain have been warmer, wetter and sunnier than in the last century, with last year the third warmest on record, a report by climate scientists said on Thursday.
The report points to how Britain’s climate is already changing as experts warn that extreme weather events, such as floods, heatwaves and droughts, will increase across the world due to the effects of global warming.
“Average temperatures for the UK continue to climb, with nearly a degree of warming when comparing the most recent 30 years with the preceding 30-year period,” said Mike Kenson, lead author and senior climate scientist at the Met Office. The year 2020 was third warmest after 2014 and 2006, the fifth wettest and eight sunniest on record for the UK. “No other year has fallen in the top-10 for all three variables for the UK,” the report said.
The State of the UK Climate report is based on observations of temperature, precipitation, sunshine and wind speed from the UK land weather station network managed by the Met Office.
“Our climate is changing and it is changing now and the science is clear that we will see more of it going into the future,” Kenson told journalists.
This month, catastrophic floods have swept across northwest Europe, an unprecedented heatwave sent temperatures soaring in Canada and wildfires are raging across the US northwest and southwestern Canada, raising questions about how countries will protect infrastructure and deal with the changing climate.