The UK is increasingly breaking heat and rainfall records as its climate continues to warm, the Met Office has warned.

According to its State of the UK Climate report, shifting weather patterns mean the country now experiences a climate that is “notably different” from that of just a few decades ago.

The latest assessment reveals that we now have significantly more very hot days and far fewer extremely cold nights.

This illustrates the extent to which global warming—driven by the vast quantities of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity—is reshaping the UK’s climate.

Climate change is contributing to more extreme weather events, such as storms and flooding. Unsurprisingly, the changing climate is already having an impact on the natural environment, with some species particularly affected.

The report highlights conditions in 2024, during which the UK experienced its second-warmest February, warmest May, warmest spring, fifth-warmest December, and fifth-warmest winter since records began in 1884.

The Met Office notes that some of these records have already been surpassed in 2025—further evidence of a trend towards increasingly extreme weather.

This summer, many parts of the country are experiencing their third heatwave, with exceptionally warm conditions extending into Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and southern England.

The first hosepipe ban of the year was introduced in Yorkshire following England’s warmest June on record, which came after the driest and sunniest spring for 132 years. Several other regions have since followed suit.

Situated between the vast Atlantic Ocean and continental Europe, the UK lies at the confluence of several major air masses. This positioning accounts for the country’s highly variable climate, which can make it more challenging to track certain changes.

While temperature trends are clearer, the Met Office notes that rainfall patterns fluctuate more significantly. Nonetheless, the UK is not only warming—it is also becoming wetter, particularly during the winter months. Between October and March, average rainfall from 2015 to 2024 was 16% higher than during the 1961–1990 period.

Behind all these changes lies the relentless rise in average temperatures driven by climate change. Since the industrial revolution, global temperatures have increased by more than 1.3°C due to the continued release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.

According to the Met Office, the UK is warming at a rate of approximately 0.25°C per decade, with the decade from 2015 to 2024 being 1.24°C warmer than the 1961–1990 baseline.

As the UK’s national meteorological service, the Met Office maintains the Central England Temperature record—the longest-running instrumental weather record in the world—dating back to 1659. This record shows that recent warming has far exceeded any temperatures observed in over three centuries.

The past three years rank among the UK’s five warmest on record, with 2024 being the fourth warmest year since records began in 1884.

Even relatively small increases in average temperature can dramatically raise the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, as illustrated in the data.

As the distribution of temperatures shifts, previously rare extremes are becoming more commonplace, while entirely new extremes are now more likely to occur.

Many remark that “it used to be colder in the past”—and the Met Office’s data confirms this. The UK experienced 14 fewer days with air frosts (when air temperature drops below 0°C) over the last decade compared to the 1931–1990 period.

As in recent years, floods and storms were responsible for the most damaging extreme weather events in the UK last year.

A succession of named storms that struck from autumn 2023 onwards contributed to widespread flooding in early January. This resulted in the wettest winter half-year (October 2023 to March 2024) in more than 250 years.

Regions particularly affected included eastern Scotland, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and the West Midlands, with some locations receiving three to four times their average September rainfall.

In early January 2024, the Royal Shakespeare Company had to cancel performances for two consecutive evenings due to flooding in Stratford-upon-Avon. In November, a wall collapsed in Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, after a local brook overflowed, inundating the town centre.

Met Office Chief Scientist Professor Stephen Belcher stated that the clear evidence of climate change impacts underscores the urgent need for the UK to adapt in order to withstand future extremes.

“The climate is likely to continue to change, and we need to prepare for the impacts this will have on the weather we experience,” he said.

For the first time, the report highlights that sea levels around the UK are rising faster than the global average.

As sea levels continue to rise, the risk of coastal and river flooding will only increase, warns Dr Svetlana Jevrejeva of the National Oceanography Centre.

“We know from historical events it is only a matter of time until the UK is next in the path of a major storm surge event,” she said.

The UK’s changing climate is also clearly affecting the natural environment.

In 2024, spring arrived earlier than average in 12 of the 13 seasonal events recorded, with the earliest appearances of frogspawn and blackbird nests since the data series began in 1999.

The timing of seasonal natural events—known as phenology—is recorded by volunteers through the Nature’s Calendar citizen science project.

Shifts in these patterns can have profound ecological consequences. Dormice and hedgehogs—two of the UK’s most threatened mammals—are particularly vulnerable to unusually warm weather.

Fruits and nuts ripen earlier in hot conditions, leaving fewer food sources available in the autumn when these animals need to fatten up in preparation for winter hibernation.

At the Alice Holt forest research centre outside London, scientists are exploring how to build resilience into the UK’s forests and tree populations.

Sadly, many native tree species are unlikely to thrive in the climate of the future, says Dr Gail Atkinson, Head of Climate Change Science at the centre.

“After a drought you can see reduced growth, so trees aren’t growing as we would expect them to,” she says.

“If you look up in the canopy you can see the leaves looking a little bit raggedy and there are other signs of stress as you’re walking through the woodland including extreme examples you might find that the trees have actually died.”

Research at Alice Holt suggests that one species well-suited to future conditions is the coastal redwood from California. The centre has been growing trees from a range of latitudes over the past 60 years to assess their suitability to the UK’s changing climate.

As a result, the tallest trees in the world could become a familiar sight in the UK in the decades ahead.

 

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At Natural World Fund, we are passionate about restoring habitats in the UK to halt the decline in our wildlife.