Mike Kendon said the UK climate is shifting fast, after the State of the UK Climate report found the last four years were among the top five hottest on record. The report said 2025 was the hottest year in the UK’s record, stretching back to 1884. On Tuesday, the Met Office said the UK had already recorded as many 30C days in 2026 as in 1976.
Kendon, the lead author at the National Climate Information Centre, said: "What we used to think of as extreme, we increasingly consider as normal" and "We are seeing unprecedented changes continuing … and every year adds to this body of evidence". He also said, "Our climate is on the move – literally".
Greater London heat records
In Greater London, the number of days over 30C and nights over 18C more than quadrupled over the same period. In an area stretching from Kent in the south-east to Lincolnshire in the East Midlands, the average hottest day of the year was 4.5C warmer in the last decade than in 1961-1990. By 2025, almost a fifth of the UK land surface reached annual average temperatures of 11C.
The report was published in the International Journal of Climatology, and it links higher temperatures to a wetter atmosphere. The article says warmer air can hold about 7% more moisture for each degree celsius of warming, which helps explain why the number of the very wettest days has risen by more than 20% since 1961-1990 and rainfall intensity has risen by 5%.
England and Wales rainfall
Liz Bentley, head of the Royal Meteorological Society, said: "The way we experience climate change most is through the weather extremes" and "Climate change has been described by scientists for many years but is now increasingly being felt by the UK population in their own homes and communities". The report said that in spring 2025, most of England and Wales received less than half of the average rainfall for the same period in 1991-2020, while England’s river flow from March to August 2025 was the second lowest on record in a dataset that goes back to 1961.
While the report says the UK is becoming wetter overall, it also says punishing droughts amid hot and dry summers are expected to worsen. England had its driest spring in a century last year, and the same year brought the country’s warmest spring and summer on record. Fire services have struggled to contain blazes in recent days as experts warned the country was in the grip of a firewave.
UK Climate report record
The immediate takeaway for people across the UK is simple: the temperature record is not just being broken, it is being reset in multiple directions at once. That means hotter days, heavier downpours and longer dry spells are all moving together, and the report says further unprecedented changes are likely to push the record again soon.
