Final yr was Britain’s hottest and sunniest on file, the nationwide climate service confirmed on Friday, calling it a “clear demonstration” of the impacts of local weather change.
“2025 now joins 2022 and 2023 within the prime three warmest years since 1884,” the Met Workplace mentioned in a statementnoting the UK’s imply temperature by final yr was 10.09C.
“That is an more and more clear demonstration of the impacts of local weather change on UK temperatures,” it added.
“It’s also solely the second yr on this sequence the place the UK’s annual imply temperature has exceeded 10.0C.” The earlier file of 10.03C was set in 2022.
It means 4 of the UK’s final 5 years now seem within the prime 5 warmest years since 1884, and all the prime ten hottest years will now have occurred within the final twenty years.
The Met Workplace had already announced final month that 2025 was the nation’s sunniest yr since that file sequence started in 1910.
The UK — which contains England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Eire — noticed 1648.5 hours of sunshine, 61.4 hours greater than the earlier file set in 2003.
‘Distinctive’ sunshine
An “distinctive” quantity of sunshine through the spring adopted by lengthy spells of clear skies through the summer season helped set the file, the Met Workplace has famous.
However whereas England noticed an unprecedented quantity of sunshine, it was solely the second sunniest in Scotland and Wales and the eighth sunniest in Northern Eire.
Mark McCarthy, the Met Workplace’s head of local weather attribution, mentioned the “very heat” yr was “consistent with anticipated penalties of human-induced local weather change”.
“Though it doesn’t suggest yearly would be the warmest on file, it’s clear from our climate observations and local weather fashions that human-induced world warming is impacting the UK’s local weather,” he added.
The nation skilled persistent spells of dry and sunny climate in 2025, with each month besides January and September hotter than common.
Spring after which a summer season that includes 4 heatwaves had been Britain’s warmest on file, whereas spring was the driest in additional than a century.
Droughts had been declared in a number of areas, reservoir websites fell beneath 50 % of their ordinary capability and a handful of water corporations issued bans on utilizing hosepipes.
Met Workplace scientist Emily Carlisle mentioned: “Meteorologically, the heat has been pushed largely by persistent high-pressure methods bringing extended dry, sunny circumstances, alongside above-average sea temperatures across the UK.
“These components have mixed to maintain temperatures persistently greater than regular for a lot of the yr.”
