The UK has seen plenty of sunshine this summer (2025), with numerous heat waves, plenty of dry spells and higher than average temperatures. So much so, the Met Office has confirmed that summer 2025 is officially the hottest on record for the UK.
The mean temperature across the whole summer, including overnight lows and daytime highs, was 16ºC. That is 1.51ºC above the long-term average. June and July 2025 saw consistent above-average temperatures, with June being the warmest on record for England, the second hottest for Wales and the third hottest for the UK overall. July then became the fifth warmest July for the UK on record.
And whilst the weather has been enjoyed by many, there is evidence that this is indicative of human-influenced climate change.
Climate scientists at the Met Office discovered that a repeat of this summer, or an even hotter summer, is now around 70 times more likely than it would have been in a climate that existed without human-made greenhouse gas emissions. Alarmingly, the five hottest summers on record have all occurred after 2000.
Head of climate attribution at the Met Office, Dr Mark McCarthy, said, "Our analysis shows that the summer of 2025 has been made much more likely because of the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution. In a natural climate, we could expect to see a summer like 2025 with an approximate return period of around 340 years, while in the current climate, we could expect to see these sorts of summers roughly 1 in every 5 years.
"Another interesting finding from our analysis is the context of this summer against other record-breaking summers, like that of 1976. Our analysis suggests that while 2025 has set a new record, we could plausibly experience much hotter summers in our current and near-future climate and shows how what would have been seen as extremes in the past are becoming more common in our changing climate".
Hotter summers due to a changing climate pose a serious threat to the environment and humanity as we know it. It could lead to food scarcity as farmers struggle to sustain crops, especially as natural biodiversity struggles to deal with the changes, meaning fewer pollinators to help those crops flourish.
Despite this, political leaders in the UK seem determined to abandon net-zero targets and turn their attention backwards to oil and gas, which only serves to increase emissions. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has pledged to remove all net-zero requirements on oil and gas drilling in the North Sea companies (should the Tories regain power), with the arguments seemingly focused on short-term economic gain rather than looking at the potential costs of a failing environment in the long term. Similar arguments are being put forward by Reform UK, with some of the Reform-led councils already removing net-zero policies. In addition, US President Donald Trump is famously unsupportive of green policies, even passing negative comments on wind farms in a recent visit to Scotland. Meanwhile, Labour pledged that there would be no new North Sea oil and gas projects, but some commentators are beginning to question whether they will sustain that promise amid growing political pressure.
However, regardless of political feeling, the message from the Met Office is clear - that it is human-influenced climate change that is influencing our hotter and drier summers.
