Met Office: UK's 20th Century Climate 'Has Now Gone'
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- Met Office published its latest climate report declaring "the climate of the 20th Century has now gone," according to climate information scientist Mike Kendon, who said the country "is on the move"
- 2025 was confirmed as the warmest year on record since data collection began in 1884, with the 2016-2025 decade running 1.33C warmer than the 1961-1990 baseline
- Southern England now sees its hottest day of the year running 4.5C warmer than in the 1961-1990 period, while days over 30C and nights over 18C have more than quadrupled in Greater London
- Imperial College London, the Met Office, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated over 2,700 people may have died from heat-related causes in England and Wales during the May-June heatwaves
- England recorded its driest spring in over 100 years, with most areas receiving less than half the 1991-2020 average rainfall and river flows from March-August 2025 hitting the second-lowest level since 1961
- Vale of York and Lancashire now experience temperatures similar to Greater London in 1961-1990, illustrating the report's finding that warming is "moving north and uphill"
Why it matters: The Met Office's confirmation that a 4.5C shift in southern England's hottest days and quadrupled tropical nights in Greater London now represent baseline conditions forces a planning reckoning for anyone designing homes, hospitals, and transport networks — historically calibrated infrastructure is now designed against a climate the agency says no longer exists. With researchers estimating over 2,700 heat-related deaths in England and Wales across a single May-June window, the gap between adaptation pace and the new climate baseline has direct, measurable human cost.
