The 13 biggest myths about heatwaves – and how to bust them
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- Prof Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) debunked 13 heatwave myths for The Guardian, noting the warmest 10 years on record have all occurred in the past decade.
- While global average temperatures have risen ~1°C, heatwaves in southern England have already become 3°C hotter — extremes are amplifying faster than the mean.
- Guy Callendar, an English steam engineer, in 1938 was the first to link ~0.3°C of observed warming to rising CO2 and coal burning — over 80 years before today's "overwhelming" evidence base.
- The current El Niño has only just started and won't peak until Christmas, yet is forecast to be a very big one — meaning more extreme weather still lies ahead.
- June 2023 was about 2°C hotter than June 1976 in the UK, when a comparable heatwave caused roughly 250 extra deaths per day.
- The 2003 European heatwave killed an estimated 40,000–70,000 people; since then, better warning systems have helped reduce excess deaths even as temperatures rise.
Why it matters: With El Niño not yet at peak and the UK ill-equipped for hotter summers, Hawkins' myth-busting targets a specific failure mode: dismissing this year's heat as natural noise. The 2003 death toll of 40,000–70,000 sets a concrete baseline for what underpreparation costs, and the 3°C-vs-1°C gap reframes public expectations of what "warming" actually feels like.
