Yahoo News UK summers to regularly reach 40C by end of the century, Met Office says
The UK could see 40C temperatures every 15 years by the end of the century as a result of climate change, the Met Office has said.
Britain’s hottest recorded temperature is 38.7C, reached in Cambridge last July, and temperatures of 40C are predicted to happen only every 100-300 years.
But if global temperatures continue to rise to 2-3C above industrial levels they could occur every 15 years, according to new analysis by the Met Office published in the journal Nature Communications.
Current global plans give only a 50 per cent chance of limiting warming to below 3C and under a ‘worst-case’ high emissions scenario, 40C would be reached in the UK every three-four years.
“We've already seen a change in UK temperatures, and we expect to see more change in the future,” said lead author Dr Nikolaos Christidis. “But with the more aggressive climate mitigation options the chance of these extreme events will actually be reduced.”
The study found that the most extreme temperatures would be found in the southeast, but even most areas of the north would regularly see temperatures reaching 30C by the end of the century.
The UK saw its sunniest Spring on record this year and scientists have attributed a steady climb in temperatures to climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Researchers were able to look for the first time at different areas of the UK because of new tools that enable analysis of climate change models on a granular level.
The study did not give a figure for the best-case scenario which would see global temperatures kept below 2C, the aim of the Paris Agreement. But the authors said the frequency would be “significantly lower”.
There are likely to be some winners from higher temperatures, particularly horticulture and tourism. The country’s wine industry has already attributed its rise in recent decades to warmer temperatures from climate change.
But, cautioned Mr Christidis, “if you look a little deeper you see it’s not just about having fun on the beach. There’s also an impact on people’s health and economic strains on society.”
Heat-related deaths have been predicted to more than double by the 2050s. High temperatures also pose risks to infrastructure - the frequency of rail buckling events is expected to be at least four times higher as the country warms and already around 4.5 million homes overheat every summer.
More temperate weather in the UK also means greater extremes elsewhere, cautioned Dr Simon Lee a meteorologist at the University of Reading, which has knock-on effects for global food supply, migration and other climate-related stressors.
"If it's as hot as you might want it to be here, it's obviously an awful lot hotter in other parts of the world, and that's mainly where the greater risk lies,” he said.
