A preliminary new UK all-time heat record was set on Tuesday at London Heathrow, when the mercury hit 40.2°C. The new reading - if verified - would increase the highest temperature ever measured in England by a whopping 1.5°C. The Met Office official records show that the previous record has been set in Cambridge in 2019.
All-time temperature records for Wales and Scotland were also broken yesterday and increased even more - by 1.9°C each. While the Scottish Borders region is understandably the place where heat records are set, Flintshire near Liverpool in Northern Wales for the second time in a row was the hottest of the bunch.
Northern Ireland on Tuesday recorded the hottest day of the year so far but not of all time. That record was set in Castlederg in County Tyrone in 2021 at 31.3°C.
While fluctuating temperatures and very hot or very cold days are a normal phenomenon, extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent due to climate change, which is the increase of global average and mean land and ocean temperatures. According to Friederike Otto, acting director at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, the likelihood of heatwaves in southern Europe is already 10 times higher than it was in pre-industrial times.
