The increasing likelihood of temperatures above 30 to 40 °C in the United Kingdom

Nikolaos Christidis (), Mark McCarthy and Peter A. Stott
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Nikolaos Christidis: Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road
Mark McCarthy: Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road
Peter A. Stott: Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract As European heatwaves become more severe, summers in the United Kingdom (UK) are also getting warmer. The UK record temperature of 38.7 °C set in Cambridge in July 2019 prompts the question of whether exceeding 40 °C is now within reach. Here, we show how human influence is increasing the likelihood of exceeding 30, 35 and 40 °C locally. We utilise observations to relate local to UK mean extremes and apply the resulting relationships to climate model data in a risk-based attribution methodology. We find that temperatures above 35 °C are becoming increasingly common in the southeast, while by 2100 many areas in the north are likely to exceed 30 °C at least once per decade. Summers which see days above 40 °C somewhere in the UK have a return time of 100-300 years at present, but, without mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, this can decrease to 3.5 years by 2100.

Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16834-0

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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16834-0

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