LONDON: Summer 2026 was provisionally the warmest ever recorded in the United Kingdom, the Met Office said on Tuesday, following a season of intense heat and drought that tested infrastructure, food production and wildfire-fighting capacity.
The UK’s average mean temperature during the meteorological summer reached 16.5 degrees Celsius (61.7 degrees Fahrenheit), making it provisionally the warmest summer and the warmest season recorded in a series dating back to 1884, the national weather agency said.
“An average mean temperature of 16.5C (61.7F) puts this summer as provisionally the warmest on record, as well as the warmest season for the UK in a series which goes back to 1884,” the Met Office said in a statement.
Summer 2026 is provisionally the UK’s warmest summer on record with the season’s mean temperature made around 130 times more likely due to human-induced climate change.
Here, we delve into the numbers 🧵 pic.twitter.com/e6p5AWT33k
— Met Office (@metoffice) September 1, 2026
The record warmth came for the second summer in a row, the agency said, adding that human-induced climate change had greatly increased the likelihood of such extreme temperatures.
The Met Office said the season’s average temperature had been made around 130 times more likely by human-induced climate change.
Summer 2026 mean temperature was 16.5°C, which beat the previous record which was set last year. June and July both had their respective second warmest months on record, which helped push the season’s figures.
Graph below shows how summer mean temperatures have changed since… pic.twitter.com/Zf0GjuGehq
— Met Office (@metoffice) September 1, 2026
Climate change impact
Mark McCarthy, the Met Office’s head of climate attribution, said a summer like that of 2026 would be extremely rare in a climate unaffected by human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.
“In a climate free from human-generated greenhouse gases, the UK would experience a summer like 2026 roughly once in 1,000 years,” he said in a statement.
“In our current climate, which is changing because of the effect of burning of fossil fuels, we should now expect this to be roughly a 1-in-9 year event,” he added.
The Met Office said the country’s five warmest summers had all occurred since 2003.
The record figures were released on September 1, the first day of meteorological autumn in Britain.
Heat, drought and wildfires
The summer was also among the sunniest on record in some parts of the country since records began in 1910, while many areas experienced exceptionally dry conditions, the Met Office said.
Late-season rainfall, however, prevented some parts of the country from recording their lowest seasonal rainfall totals on record.
Drought has been declared across large parts of Britain, while the country has experienced an unprecedented number of wildfires. In some severe cases, fires destroyed homes.
The prolonged heat and dry weather have also affected agriculture. Britain’s cereal harvest is on track to be the worst since comparable records began in 1984.
The Met Office had already warned in July that extreme weather was becoming increasingly normal as the climate warmed.
While Britain’s record summer was marked by sustained high temperatures, the country’s peak temperature was not its highest ever recorded.
The highest temperature of the summer was 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.58 degrees Fahrenheit), recorded in London on August 13. It was the fifth-highest temperature ever recorded in the UK.
Britain has generally faced less severe consequences than parts of mainland Europe, where recent heatwaves have been linked to hundreds of deaths, disrupted power supplies and forced school closures.
