Met Office chief meteorologist Ian Lisk told the Airports UK annual conference that a meteorologist can no longer treat weather as normal. He said, “We don’t get normal weather any more, fundamentally,” and warned business leaders that extreme conditions are becoming more frequent and more severe.
The warning came as the Met Office said the UK was on course for its hottest summer on record this year, according to provisional data. Lisk said the service is already taking extreme weather into account when testing worst-case scenarios for the UK’s infrastructure and aviation industry.
Airports UK annual conference
Lisk said people had already seen the consequences of climate change this summer and that the UK was worrying about heatwaves and droughts affecting next year too. He said, “The heatwaves and the events of this last summer had nothing to do with El Nino.”
That matters because the Met Office has previously said El Nino can affect weather patterns in Europe and can bring warmer, wetter and stormier conditions across the UK and northern Europe during late autumn and early winter. The service has also said El Nino is one of several climate drivers that can influence the UK’s weather, without determining exactly what conditions will arrive.
Climate Change Committee
James Richardson, the chief analyst at the Climate Change Committee, said the UK needs more work to make infrastructure resilient to extreme weather. He said, “The three areas of weakness for the aviation industry are heat, flood and drought,” and added, “We are a long way behind in terms of what is needed for adaptation as a country.”
For airport operators and others relying on transport links, the practical reading is direct: planning now has to assume hotter summers, drier spells and stronger storms rather than wait for a return to old patterns. The next pressure point is whether the UK can build enough resilience before the deficits Lisk described deepen further.
