The highest UK temperature ever recorded

The first week of July is expected to be confirmed as the hottest week ever for the world, with experts putting the soaring global temperatures down to climate change and the El Niño weather pattern.

According to the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), at least three datasets, from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), the University of Maine and the EU space programme Copernicus, found that preliminary records had been broken. Average global temperatures appeared to peak at 17.24°C on Friday.

It has led to concerns that the UK may experience another 40°C heatwave this summer after last year's record highs.

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What was the hottest day in the UK?

The mercury hit 40.3°C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire on 19 July 2022, the highest temperature in the UK verified by the Met Office.

The previous record was 38.7°C, recorded in Cambridge University Botanic Garden on 25 July 2019, beating the previous record of 38.5°C in Faversham, Kent, in August 2003.

Met Office records also show that, since 1884, all of the UK’s ten hottest years have occurred since 2002 – while the most recent of the top ten coldest was almost 60 years ago, in 1963.

What’s causing the average temperature increase around the world?

Climate experts have attributed these rising temperatures to a combination of human-induced climate change and the recurring weather phenomenon known as El Niño.

The weather event, which occurs every three to seven years, “is the most powerful fluctuation in the climate system anywhere on Earth”, said Georgina Rannard, climate and science reporter at the BBC.

“El Niño hasn’t peaked yet and summer is still in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere,” said Dr Paulo Ceppi, lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, “so it wouldn’t be surprising if the daily temperature record is broken again and again in 2023.”

Dr Karsten Haustein, a research fellow in atmospheric radiation at Leipzig University, told The Guardian that July was likely to be the warmest month since the interglacial period some 120,000 years ago.

What is the hottest temperature ever recorded in the world?

As you might imagine, British “heatwaves” pale in comparison with those experienced in warmer climes.

In India, for instance, each dry season brings near-intolerable temperatures and a wave of heat-related deaths. Nearly 170 people died in just a few days last month as the northern states sweltered in the heat. It was a particularly bad year for the nation in 2015, when at least 2,500 people are thought to have died as temperatures approached 50°C.

America’s Furnace Creek Ranch, formerly Greenland Ranch, in the aptly named Death Valley desert is recognised as having the world’s highest temperature, 56.7°C, recorded on 10 July 1913, said Guinness World Records. However, it notes that doubts have been cast on the figure and it might have been the result of a sandstorm that occurred at the time.

Now “a mountain of scientific research has shown that climate change is making heat waves longer, hotter, more likely, and more dangerous”, said National Geographic.