UK climate now hotter, sunnier: weather agency

The UK climate has shifted markedly from twentieth-century norms, with rising temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events, Britain's Met Office said in a report published Wednesday.

The agency said the hottest and coldest conditions the country now typically experiences have changed significantly since most of the last century.

How has the UK climate changed?

Britain has warmed by about 0.25C per decade since the 1980s, and the last four years rank among the five hottest since 1884. Heatwaves, sunshine and marine warming all broke records in 2025, while days above 30C and nights above 18C in Greater London have more than quadrupled since the 1961 to 1990 period.

"The observational evidence demonstrates that what we regard as our 'normal' climate in terms of the hottest and coldest spells of weather we would typically expect has very significantly changed from what it was through most of the 20th century," the Met Office report said.

What weather records did the UK break in 2025?

The UK saw two unprecedented heatwaves in May and June, with monthly temperature records set in England at 35.1C and 37.7C respectively. It also recorded its hottest year on record in 2025, with an average temperature of 10.1C, and its sunniest year since 1910.

Britain's spring and summer combined produced a mean maximum temperature anomaly of plus 2.1C, the report said. Total sunshine reached 125% of the 1991 to 2020 average, the warmest and sunniest such period on record. UK coastal waters were not spared either, with 297 days of marine heatwave conditions in 2025, the most since 1982 and far above the previous record of 178 days set in 2023.

How is the warming trend affecting UK infrastructure and businesses?

"A lot of our infrastructure, our housing stock, our agriculture, our health systems are based on a climate that is no longer represented by the recent observations we are continuing," Mike Kendon, a Met Office climate scientist and the report's lead author, told a press briefing Tuesday.

Some companies have already responded. Retailer Marks & Spencer recently announced investments in equipment capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 45C. Eurostar said it will upgrade air conditioning on its high-speed cross-Channel trains to withstand temperatures of 55C, up from 45C currently.