This year’s summer was the UK’s hottest on record, according to provisional data, and the Met Office said the season’s mean temperature was made 130 times more likely by the climate crisis.
Record-breaking and back-to-back heatwaves have scorched much of Europe. In England, temperatures peaked at 38.1C (100.1F) at Kew Gardens in London on 13 August, and June had already been confirmed as the country’s hottest since records began in 1884. Scientists have said these heatwaves are only possible because of the climate crisis driven by burning fossil fuels.
The Met Office said an average mean UK temperature of 16.5C made this summer provisionally the warmest on record as well as the warmest season in a series going back to 1884. England, Wales and Northern Ireland broke their respective mean temperature records for summer while Scotland recorded its joint sixth hottest summer.
This is the second year in a row that temperature records have been broken, with 2025 and 2026 both the warmest UK summers since records began.
The infamous summer of 1976 is now the seventh warmest on record in terms of mean temperature.
Katie White, the minister for climate transition, said it was a “brutal reminder that we’re not waiting for climate change to arrive in Britain, we’re living in the middle of it. With kids too hot to sleep, families worrying about older relatives, farmers watching fields dry out, and firefighters and our armed forces battling wildfires, we’ve all woken up to a reality none of us wants for the people and places we love.”
England is on track to record its highest ever number of heat-related deaths this summer. The UK Health Security Agency announced on 30 July that an estimated 2,877 people had died in the May and June heatwaves alone.
A study conducted by Met Office scientists showed this summer’s record-breaking heat was made about 130 times more likely because of human-induced climate change. The Met Office’s climate projections indicate that UK summers will continue to become hotter.
The Met Office’s head of climate attribution, Dr Mark McCarthy, 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.”
Education, health services and transport all suffered in the heat, with many schools closed and hospital appointments cancelled.
Across Europe, extreme heat has been linked to at least 35,000 excess deaths over the summer.
The hot weather has been coupled with extreme and persistent drought and severe wildfires. England had its driest July on record with only 6.5mm of rainfall, which was 10% of its long-term meteorological average for the month and less than half of the previous record low of 13.4mm set in 1911.
A wildfire near the Sizewell nuclear plant in Suffolk caused “total devastation” to a protected landscape, and in Stourbridge 19 homes were destroyed after multiple fires spread across the West Midlands.
In his first Commons address as prime minister on Tuesday, Andy Burnham referenced the devastating Nepal-Tibet floods and said: “This is what the climate crisis looks like. We have just ourselves experienced what is likely to have been the hottest summer on record. This government will meet the climate challenge, and I can confirm to the house that I will attend Cop31 in Turkey in November.”
On Wednesday, the Conservative party is due to present a 10-minute rule motion to parliament to repeal the Climate Change Act 2008. This act was a landmark piece of legislation which enshrined the UK’s legally binding net zero target into law.
Alasdair Johnstone from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit said the act was designed to reduce short-term political expediency and to keep successive UK governments on track to cut emissions. “The science is very clear that reaching net zero emissions is the only way to stop baking in ever higher temperatures, the likes of which have put the UK on track for its worst harvest on record, pushing up food prices and threatening the basics of our food security,” he said.
Dr James Pope, a Met Office climate scientist, said: “This summer will also be remembered for how dry it has been, particularly in the south in July. Looking at climate projections for rainfall, this summer fits closely to what we would expect an average summer to look like in the UK under 3C of global warming, as we expect summers to become both hotter and drier in the future.”
Dr Amy Doherty, who leads the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, 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 [16.1C), 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.”
