2022 will be the UK’s warmest year on record as the Met Office says figures show the climate crisis is having a real impact.
Forecasters highlighted that the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2003. Temperature trends show the UK has been hotter since mankind began burning greenhouse gases into the atmosphere fossil fuels, and all four seasons in 2022 fall into the top 10 in one year. ranking that began in 1884.
The Met Office said the average annual temperature in the UK this year would beat the previous record set in 2014, when the average was 9.88C.
Dr Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, said: “2022 will be the warmest year on record for the UK. Although many will remember the extreme summer heat , what has stood out this year has been the relatively consistent heat throughout the year, with all months except December being warmer than average.
“The warm year is in line with the genuine impacts we expect as a result of human-induced climate change. While it doesn’t mean that every year will be the warmest on record, climate change continues to increase the chances of increasingly warmer years over the coming decades.”
Not only will 2022 be the warmest in the 139 years used by the Met Office as the official record, it will also be the warmest on record in the 364-year Central England temperature series of 1659, the longest instrumental temperature record in the world. .
The final provisional figure for 2022 will be available later this year and will then be subject to further quality control and a verification process.
Forecasters said the year would be remembered not only for its record heat, but also for the extreme weather that occurred, including July’s heatwave, which saw temperatures reach unprecedented highs. The country recorded its first temperature above 40. The hottest place was Coningsby, Lincolnshire, at 40.3C, beating the previous UK record by 1.6C. During July’s hot spell, the Met Office issued its first red warning of extreme heat with widespread impacts for the UK.
There has also been a severe lack of rain, with most of the country still in the depths of a record drought that began in August.
On the other hand, December has been relatively cool, with 2022 bringing the coldest first two weeks of December since 2010. Temperatures fell to -17.3C in Braemar, Aberdeenshire.
The Met Office has attributed much of this disruptive weather to weather disruption.
McCarthy explained: “Met Office science has shown that the temperatures witnessed in mid-July would have been extremely unlikely in the pre-industrial period, the era before humanity began to emit large amounts of greenhouse gases from burning fuels fossils
“However, as we have seen in the first two weeks of December, our climate is still subject to notable cold spells during the winter season, but our observational data shows that these have generally become less frequent and less severe as our climate warms.”