'British way of life under threat' as Met Office warns extreme weather 'becoming the norm'

Britain's clime is changing rapidly, with records regularly being smashed and extremes of vigor and rainfall becoming the norm, the Met Office has warned.

In an updated appraisal of the UK's climate, the forecaster says heatwaves and periods of flood oregon drought are becoming much predominant and much intense.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband called the findings "a stark warning" to instrumentality enactment connected clime and nature.

"Our British mode of beingness is nether threat," Mr Miliband told the PA quality agency.

"Whether it is utmost heat, droughts, flooding, we tin spot it really with our ain eyes, that it's already happening, and we request to act."

The study shows the play betwixt October 2023 and March 2024 was the wettest wintertime play successful England and Wales successful implicit 250 years.

Spring 2024 was besides the warmest connected record.

It says the expanding extremes are "typical of caller years".

Mike Kendon, a Met Office clime idiosyncratic and pb writer of the State of the UK Climate report, said: "Every twelvemonth that goes by is different upward measurement connected the warming trajectory our clime is on.

"Observations amusement that our clime successful the UK is present notably antithetic to what it was conscionable a fewer decades ago.

"We are present seeing records being breached precise often arsenic we spot somesthesia and rainfall extremes being the astir affected by our changing climate."

The study compares the decennary up to 2024 with semipermanent averages betwixt 1961 and 1990.

While the mean somesthesia is increasing, the hottest summertime days and coldest wintertime nights person warmed doubly arsenic fast.

The clime is besides becoming wetter - with the other rainfall falling betwixt October and March.

Over the past decade, rainfall implicit the six-month wintertime play was 16% higher than the mean betwixt 1961 and 1990.

Effects of UK clime alteration 'deeply concerning'

Chief enforcement of the Royal Meteorological Society, Professor Liz Bentley, said the study "reinforces the wide and urgent signals of our changing climate".

"While semipermanent averages are shifting, it is the utmost heat, aggravated rainfall and droughts that are having the astir contiguous and melodramatic effects connected radical and nature," she said.

"This study is not conscionable a grounds of change, but a telephone to action."

Read more:
Nine deaths linked to 'silent killer' heatwave
What the upwind has successful store for July

Kathryn Brown, manager of climate change astatine The Wildlife Trusts, said the effects of clime alteration connected UK wildlife were already "deeply concerning".

"From swifts dropping retired of the entity during heatwaves to trees flowering overmuch earlier than they person successful the past," she said.

"We are peculiarly disquieted astir the effects of droughts connected our quality reserves."