This morning, entirely justified in my point of view, I added twice as much ice to my iced latte. It's been the hottest week in decades in the UK, specifically across the South East and East of England, with temperatures soaring well beyond 35C. Our neighbours on the continent were in no better shape. Paris hit 40C, with alcohol banned in public spaces under the city's red alert and cardiac arrests recorded there in a single day, against a normal average of under 10.
Heat is the new normal. And no, 1976 is not evidence that climate change isn't real.
Let's deal with that one properly, because it comes up every single time. This week the Met Office issued a Red Extreme Heat warning on three consecutive days for the first time ever, and broke the UK's June temperature record on three consecutive days too: 36.7C at Merryfield in Somerset on the 25th, beating a record that had stood since 1957, not just 1976. Wales recorded its hottest June day ever in Cardiff. Both England and Wales also broke their warmest-ever June nights, with temperatures barely dipping below 23C, and it's the nights that do the real damage, because a body that never gets to cool down never gets to recover.
What 1976 deniers conveniently skip over is frequency, not just the existence of a hot summer. This is already the UK's second major heatwave of the year, after a record-breaking May. Spain has recorded a dozen June heatwaves since it started tracking them in 1975, and half of them have happened since 2015. You can't really call this an outlier. That is, as far as I'm concerned, a pattern. The Met Office's own chief scientist said this week that human-caused climate change has made events like this more likely and more intense.
It's fair to say that the UK, its houses and infrastructure, and the way we live on this island in terms of work patterns, lifestyle and culture, none of it is built for the temperatures we're now living through. Only around 20% of European homes have air conditioning, because the continent was never designed for this. UK rail companies cancelled and slowed services this week because steel rails can buckle once they reach around 46C, a threshold direct sunshine gets you to well before the air temperature even hits 30C. We're not just uncomfortable. We're structurally unprepared.
And heat is not an equal opportunity hazard. This week, two people died in water-related incidents in the UK as people sought relief from the temperatures. Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth declared a critical incident after its cooling units failed mid-heatwave. Over a thousand schools across England and Wales closed early or sent pupils home.
Subscribe to continue reading
