Record-breaking and extreme weather has become increasingly commonplace in the UK, says the Met Office. Baselines are shifting, records are becoming more frequent and temperature and rainfall extremes are becoming the norm. The latest ‘State of the UK Climate report’, published by Wiley in the Royal Meteorological Society’s ‘International Journal of Climatology’, provides insight into the UK’s changing climate.

It highlights how the UK’s climate has warmed steadily from the 1980s onwards, albeit with individual cooler years, with the greatest implications from the increasing frequency and intensity of daily temperature extremes. The last three years have been in the UK’s top five warmest on record, with 2024 the fourth warmest year in records dating back to 1884. In 2024 the UK saw the its second warmest February, warmest May, fifth warmest December, fifth warmest winter and warmest spring on record.

The report shows how the UK has warmed at a rate of approximately 0.25°C per decade since the 1980s, with the most recent decade (2015-2024) 1.24°C warmer than 1961-1990. Looking even further back, the Central England Temperature series shows that recent warming has far exceeded any observed temperatures in at least 300 years.