Climate scientists have expressed shock at the UK’s record-breaking temperature, with temperatures soaring above 40C for the first time on Tuesday.
Researchers are also increasingly concerned that extreme heat waves in Europe are occurring faster than models have predicted, indicating that the climate crisis on the European continent may be even worse than feared.
Temperature records are usually broken by fractions of a degree, but the 40.2C recorded at Heathrow was 1.5C higher than the previous record of 38.7C set in 2019 in Cambridge.
Over the past decade, the UK has averaged around 2,000 heatwave deaths a year, as well as widespread disruption to work, schools and travel. Scientists said the latest record shows that reducing carbon emissions and rapidly modernizing the UK’s overheating homes and buildings is more urgent than ever.
Professor Peter Stott of the Met Office said: “I find it shocking that we have reached these temperatures today in 2022, breaking the previous record which was only set in 2019.”
Elementary school students try to keep their cool. Photo: Twitter
His research in 2020 showed there was a chance the UK could reach 40C due to global warming. “But we calculated it to be a relatively low probability – roughly a one in a hundred chance – even though those odds are increasing rapidly all the time with continued warming,” Stott told the Guardian. “Crossing 40C today is very worrying; we’ve never seen anything like this in the UK and it could be that the risk of such extreme heat is even greater than our previous calculations have shown.
The risk was certainly increasing rapidly, said Dr Nikos Christidis, who also worked on the 2020 study: “The main message is that this event is becoming more common and by the end of the century it will no longer be an extreme.”
The role of man-made global warming seems clear, as scientists have calculated that the chances of the UK reaching 40C without it would be less than 0.1%. Dr Friederike Otto of Imperial College London said 40C “would be extremely unlikely or virtually impossible without human-caused climate change”.
Otto added: “Although still rare, 40C is now a reality of British summers.”
“Climate change is driving this heat wave, just like it’s driving every heat wave now,” she said. “Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil make heat waves hotter, longer and more frequent.”
Professor Hannah Cloke, from the University of Reading, said: “The all-time temperature record for the UK has not just been broken, it has been completely obliterated.
“Even as a climatologist who studies these things, it’s scary.”
“I didn’t expect to see that [40C] in my career,” said Prof Stephen Belcher of the Met Office.
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Climate scientists are concerned that the increase in extreme weather may happen faster than expected. “In Europe, climate models really underestimate the change in extreme heat compared to observations,” Otto said. “There are still issues with climate models that we don’t fully understand yet.”
Prof Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in the US said his research showed climate models had failed to adequately link many extreme summer weather events to climate change.
“This is due to processes that are not well captured in the models, but are at play in the real world – for example, the impact of warming on the behavior of the summer jet stream, which gives us many of the extreme heat waves, floods, droughts, wildfires that we see,” he said. “This suggests that the models are, if anything, underestimating the potential for future increases in various types of extreme events.”
Tourists in southwest France on Monday look at the plume of dark smoke over the Pilatus dune due to a forest fire. Photo: Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images
There were explanations for the extreme “crazy heat” occurring after just over 1C of average global warming, said Prof Stefan Ramstorff of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. First, land is warming much faster than the oceans, which cover 70% of the planet and dominate the global average.
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Second, changing weather patterns could lead to more extreme temperatures, he said. “Europe is a heatwave hotspot, exhibiting upward trends that are three to four times faster than the rest of the northern mid-latitudes. The reason? Changes in the jet stream. Third, the slowing of a key current in the Atlantic Ocean tends to increase summer heat and drought in Europe.
While 40C broke the benchmark in the UK, researchers in mainland Europe, which is also in the grip of the heatwave, are now considering 50C. “In France, reaching 50C in the coming decades cannot be ruled out,” said Prof Robert Vautard of the Sorbonne University. “For France, Spain and many other countries, the current historical record is within 5 degrees of 50C and we know that such a jump is possible.”
Climate action remains vital, Otto said: “Does [40C in the UK] whether it becomes very common or remains relatively rare is up to us and determined by when and at what global average temperature we reach net zero. Heat waves will continue to worsen until greenhouse gas emissions are stopped.”
“It is also in our hands whether any future heat wave will continue to be extremely deadly and destructive,” she said. “We have the agency that makes us less vulnerable and redesigns our cities and homes and schools and hospitals and teaches us how to keep ourselves safe.”
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