‘Profound concern’ as scientists say extreme heat ‘now the norm’ in UK. Increasing frequency of heatwaves and flooding raises fears over health, infrastructure and how society functions

 

Weather records clearly show the UK’s climate is different now compared with just a few decades ago. Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock

by Damian Carrington Environment editor

 

 

Record-breaking extreme weather is the new norm in the UK, scientists have said, showing that the country is firmly in the grip of the climate crisis.

The hottest days people endure have dramatically increased in frequency and severity, and periods of intense rain have also ramped up, data from hundreds of weather stations shows. Heatwaves and floods leading to deaths and costly damage are of “profound concern” for health, infrastructure and the functioning of society, the scientists said.

The weather records clearly show the UK’s climate is different now compared with just a few decades ago, the scientists said, as a result of the carbon pollution emitted by burning fossil fuels.

The analysis found that the number of days with temperatures 5C above the average for 1961-1990 had doubled in the last 10 years. For days 8C above average, the number has trebled and for 10C above average it has quadrupled. The UK has also become 8% sunnier in the last decade.

The assessment also reported that rain had become more intense. The number of months where counties receive at least double the average rainfall has risen by 50% in the last 20 years. Much of the additional rain is falling in the months from October to March. That period in 2023-24 was the wettest ever, in records that span back to 1767, and resulted in flooding in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, the West Midlands and elsewhere.

The sea level around the UK is rising faster than the global average, the report said, which worsens the impact of coastal flooding.

Six hundred people are believed to have died due to the heatwave that hit England and Wales at the end of June. The soaring temperatures were made 100 times more likely by global heating, the scientists calculated. Two more heatwaves have followed in quick succession.

The government’s preparations to protect people from the escalating impacts of the climate crisis were condemned as “inadequate, piecemeal and disjointed” by official advisers in April.

Mike Kendon at the Met Office, who led the analysis, said: “Breaking records frequently and seeing these extremes, this is now the norm. We might not notice the change from one year to the next, but if we look back 10 years, or 30 years, we can see some really big changes. We’re moving outside the envelope of what we’ve known in the past.”

“The extremes have the greatest impact for our society, if we think about our infrastructure, our public health, and how we function,” he said. “So this is really of profound concern.”

The assessment, called the State of the UK Climate 2024 and published in the International Journal of Climatology, found the last three years were in the UK’s top five hottest years on record. The warmest spring on record was seen in 2024 although this has already been surpassed in 2025.

The UK has particularly long meteorological records and the Central England Temperature series is the longest instrumental record in the world. It shows that recent temperatures have far exceeded any in at least 300 years. However, today’s high temperatures are likely to be average by 2050, and cool by 2100, the scientists said.

Sea level around the UK has already risen by 19cm over the last century, as glaciers and ice sheets melt and the oceans absorb heat and expand. The rise is accelerating and is higher around the UK than globally, although scientists are yet to work out why. It could rise by up to 200cm by the end of the century, said Dr Svetlana Jevrejeva, at the National Oceanography Centre.

Storm winds can push seawater surges on to coasts and are most dangerous when they coincide with the highest tides. “The extra sea level rise [due to global heating] is leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme sea levels and an intensification of coastal hazards,” said Jevrejeva. “It is only a matter of time until the UK is next in the path of a major storm surge event.”

While heat records are increasingly being broken, cold weather events are becoming less common. For example, days with air frosts have fallen by 14 per year in the last decade, compared with the 1931-1990 average.

The UK’s changed climate has also affected nature, the report said. The earliest ever frogspawn and blackbird nesting was seen in 2024, in records that began in 1999. All but one of the 13 natural events monitored were earlier than average in 2024, from the first lesser celandine flower to the first elder leaves. The changes mean species that depend on others, such as for food or pollination, risk getting out of sync, said Dr Judith Garforth at the Woodland Trust.

Prof Liz Bentley, at the Royal Meteorological Society, said the report showed the urgent need to make the UK resilient to climate-fuelled extreme weather: “This report is not just a record of change, but a call to action.”

Desperate search for girls swept away at summer camp after dozens killed in floods. At least 27 people have died and 27 girls who were at a Christian summer camp are missing

 

Rescue workers along the Guadalupe River in the wake of flooding event in Kerrville, Texas. Photograph: San Antonio Express-News/Express-News/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

 Theguardian

Twenty-seven people confirmed dead in Texas

Twenty seven people are confirmed dead after flooding in Texas.

Eighteen are adults and nine are children, an official from Kerr County said.

“We are working hard to locate anyone who is still missing and ensure they are safe,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.

Some 850 people have been rescued so far.

 

As the World Warms, Extreme Rain Is Becoming Even More Extreme

Even in places, like Central Texas, with a long history of floods, human-caused warming is creating the conditions for more frequent and severe deluges.

A person overlooks flooding at the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, on Saturday.Credit...Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

By Raymond Zhong

Colossal bursts of rain like the ones that caused the deadly flooding in Texas are becoming more frequent and intense around the globe as the burning of fossil fuels heats the planet, scientists say.

Warm air holds more moisture than cool air, and as temperatures rise, storms can produce bigger downpours. When met on the ground with outdated infrastructure or inadequate warning systems, the results can be catastrophic.

These were the ingredients for tragedy in Texas, a state that is well acquainted with weather extremes of all kinds: high heat and deep cold, deluges and droughts, tornadoes and hurricanes, hail and snow. Indeed, the Hill Country, the part of the state where the Guadalupe River swelled on Friday, is sometimes called “flash flood alley” for how at risk it is to seemingly out-of-nowhere surges of water.

Humid air blows into the area from two main sources, the Gulf of Mexico and the tropical Pacific Ocean. When this air collides with cool air drifting down across the Great Plains, severe storms can erupt. The hilly terrain and steep canyons quickly funnel the rain into river valleys, transforming lazy streams into roaring cascades.

In parts of Texas that were flooded on Friday, the quantities of rain that poured down in a six-hour stretch were so great that they had less than a tenth of 1 percent chance of falling there in any given year, according to data analyzed by Russ Schumacher, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.

 

The Guadalupe River rose from three feet to 34 feet in about 90 minutes, according to data from a river gauge near the town of Comfort, Texas. The volume of water exploded from 95 cubic feet per second to 166,000 cubic feet per second.

And the warming climate is creating the conditions in Texas for more of these sharp, deadly deluges.

In the eastern part of the state, the number of days per year with at least two inches of rain or snow has increased by 20 percent since 1900, according to the most recent National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s flagship report on how global warming is affecting the United States. Across Texas, the intensity of extreme rain could increase another 10 percent by 2036, according to a report last year by John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist.

To understand patterns of heavy rain at a more local level, communities and officials rely on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency has for decades published nationwide estimates of the probabilities of various precipitation events — that is, a certain number of inches falling in a particular location over a given amount of time, from five minutes to 24 hours to 60 days.

Engineers use NOAA’s estimates to design storm drains and culverts. City planners use them to guide development and regulations in flood-prone areas.

NOAA’s next updates to the estimates are scheduled to be released starting next year. For the first time, they are expected to include projections of how extreme precipitation will evolve as the climate changes, in order to help officials plan further ahead.

But in recent months, the Trump administration has cut staff at the agency and at the National Weather Service, which sits within NOAA. The administration has also dismissed the hundreds of experts who had been compiling the next edition of the National Climate Assessment, which was scheduled to come out in 2028. And it is proposing deep cuts to NOAA’s 2026 budget, including eliminating the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which conducts and coordinates climate research.

Tempestades na Espanha deixam mais de 62 mortos

 

Região de Málaga também foi atingida

 

Autoridades da Espanha confirmaram nesta quarta-feira (30/01) que ao menos 62 pessoas morreram e várias estão desaparecidas após as enchentes  que atingiram a província de Valência. As inundações arrastaram carros, transformaram ruas de vilarejos em rios e interromperam o tráfego em linhas ferroviárias e rodovias.

Nesta terça-feira, chuvas torrenciais e inundações causaram estragos em várias partes do país, principalmente em uma ampla área do sul e do leste. Os maiores impactos foram registrados nas regiões costeiras mediterrâneas da Andaluzia, Múrcia e Valência.

Além das fortes chuvas, houve também queda de granizo e fortes rajadas de vento, segundo com o serviço meteorológico nacional Aemet. A agência previu que as tempestades devem continuar até esta quinta-feira

A força da água arrastou veículos e destroços pelas ruas de várias localidades. A polícia e os serviços de resgate usaram helicópteros para retirar pessoas de casas e carros. O governo da região de Valência pediu aos moradores que se desloquem para terrenos mais altos.

Inundações na Espanha transformaram ruas de vilarejos em rios e interromperam o tráfego em linhas ferroviárias e rodoviasFoto: JOSE JORDAN/AFP/Getty Images

 
 O transporte aéreo e ferroviário também foi afetado. Um trem de alta velocidade com quase 291 pessoas a bordo descarrilou perto de Málaga devido a um deslizamento de terra. A empresa ferroviária estatal Renfe informou que o acidente, porém, não deixou feridos.

 

Governo cria comitê de crise

O serviço de trens de alta velocidade e outras linhas de passageiros entre Valência e Madri foi interrompido. Aulas tiveram de ser canceladas em várias escolas e universidades. Mais de mil membros dos serviços de emergências da Espanha foram enviados para as áreas atingidas.

A tempestade já havia atingido Mallorca e outras Ilhas Baleares na segunda-feira, onde um alerta amarelo de tempestade ainda está em vigor para algumas áreas.

O governo da Espanha criou um comitê de crise para coordenar os esforços de resgate, que será presidido pelo primeiro-ministro, Pedro Sánchez.

Carros foram arrastados pela força das águas

 

A tempestade deve se mover para nordeste do país nesta quarta-feira, enquanto um alerta de clima severo permanece em vigor para uma grande parte da Espanha.

Tempestades após fortes secas

As tempestades que atingem a Espanha ocorrem após uma seca severa. Cientistas afirmam que o aumento dos episódios de clima extremo provavelmente está associado às mudanças climáticas. À medida que as temperaturas globais aumentam, o ar mais quente retém mais umidade, o que intensifica os níveis de precipitação.

Atividades humanas, como desenvolvimento urbano, desmatamento e infraestruturas inadequadas, também contribuem significativamente para os riscos de inundações.

rc/cn (AP, DPA, EFE)

 

More than 200 dead in Nepal floods, as parts of Kathmandu left under water. At least 30 stranded or missing and hundreds injured after heaviest monsoon rains in two decades.

 

A woman carries a chair along a muddy street as the flood water recedes from a residential area in Kathmandu. Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

 

More than 200 people were killed in Nepal over the weekend in what experts described as some of the worst flash flooding to have hit the capital, Kathmandu, and the surrounding valleys.

Swathes of Kathmandu were left underwater after the heaviest monsoon rains in two decades fell on Friday and Saturday, washing away entire neighbourhoods, bridges and roads. The heavy rains caused the Bagmati River, which runs through the city, to swell more than 2 metres higher than deemed safe.

Officials reported that by Monday afternoon, 204 bodies had been recovered from the disaster and at least 30 more people were still stranded or missing, while hundreds more were injured. Dozens who died had been travelling on buses that were washed away when the highways were engulfed by surging flood waters.

A view of a flooded area in Kathmandu. Photograph: Narendra Shrestha/EPA

 

Nepal’s army said more than 4,000 people had been rescued using helicopters, motorboats and rafts. Search teams continued working to dig people buried in deep mud and rubble, while rescue teams also used ziplines to reach those who were stranded.

The mountain city of Pokhara, which is popular with tourists, was also hit by heavy flooding.

 Flooding and landslides caused by non-stop rain kill 148 in Nepal – video

 

In the aftermath, thousands were displaced and hundreds were left without access to power and drinking water. The damage to the roads was so extensive that all main routes out of Kathmandu remained blocked and schools in the capital were closed for the next three days.

Officials and experts attributed the disaster to the climate crisis, which is causing increasingly intensive and erratic downpours and deadly flooding in south Asian countries such as Nepal. While the monsoon rains are drawing to a close, the onslaught over the weekend was caused by unusual monsoon weather patterns.

People salvage their belongings along a street as the flood water recedes in Kathmandu. Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

More than 300 people have died in Nepal this year from rain-related incidents, and recent studies have shown that the incidence of heavy flooding is likely to increase in the Himalayan country in the next five years as it is disproportionately affected by the changing climate.

Arun Bhakta Shrestha, an environmental risks expert at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), said he had “never before seen flooding on this scale in Kathmandu”.

ICIMOD said the scale of the disaster had been worsened by unplanned urban encroachment on flood plains and unauthorised construction without proper drainage along the banks of the Bagmati River. It called for the restoration of wetlands in areas vulnerable to flooding.

Floods Wreak Havoc Across Four Continents

 

The swollen Elbe river in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday.Credit...Filip Singer/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Austyn Gaffney and Somini Sengupta

 

Chad. Vietnam. Austria. The American South.

In very disparate regions of the world, extreme rainfall in recent weeks has killed thousands of people, submerged entire towns, set off landslides and left millions without power. It’s a harbinger of the wild weather events that are a hallmark of climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, and it is highlighting the need to urgently adapt, in rich and poor countries alike.

Bursts of extreme rainfall are making both coastal and riverine flooding more dangerous and unpredictable.

“Extreme events are getting stronger everywhere, so we should expect floods to be bigger regardless of where we are,” said Michael Wehner, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “There is no question that these kinds of floods all over the world are getting worse.”

What’s the climate connection?

Some of the recent deadly floods, like the landslides in Kerala, in southern India, earlier this summer, can be directly attributable to human-induced climate change.

 

A scientific study, released in August, found that the downpour that caused the landslide was 10 percent heavier because of human-caused climate change.

There are no similar attribution studies yet for the floods of recent weeks. Though some studies are underway, there simply aren’t enough resources to carry out an attribution study for every single event.

 Sifting through debris at the site of a landslide in Lao Cai province in Vietnam in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi last week.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

Nonetheless, the science is clear: A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. That can cause bursts of extreme rainfall, on top of other meteorological factors. For instance, Storm Boris, a sluggish, low-pressure system, has dumped five times September’s average rainfall across Europe since the storm began last week. A blast of cold polar air collided with a sweep of warm Mediterranean air dense with water vapor, producing an unusually powerful storm that brought heavy rains and strong winds. As of Wednesday, at least 23 people have died in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania, according to Reuters.

In the United States, North and South Carolina are being battered this week by equally rare storms. Some areas recorded 18 inches of rain over 12 hours, an amount so statistically rare it’s considered a one-in-a-thousand-year event.

 

Typhoon Yagi, one of the region's most powerful storms, brought rain and winds up to 127 miles per hour across northern Vietnam. At least 143 people have died in the aftermath, including 22 who died following a landslide in the Lao Cai, a mountainous province bordering China. The storm marched on to Myanmar, killing at least 110 more people in flash floods and landslides.

Death tolls are higher in places already at risk

The latest floods come on top of accumulating hazards that have whittled away at people’s ability to cope.

Parts of Northern Nigeria were battered by seven days of nonstop heavy rainfall that caused a dam to burst, killing at least 200 people and submerging half the city of Maiduguri. Local officials told Reuters it was the worst flooding in two decades. The rain came just months after scorching pre-monsoon heat and after years of conflict in the area between Boko Haram militants and the Nigerian government forces. The governor of Borno state said that the floods had displaced more than a million people and that there was a high risk of diseases spreading

 

People displaced by floods arrived in Maiduguri, Nigeria, on Sept. 12.Credit...Audu Marte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

 

Likewise in Chad, reeling from years of conflict and the influx of refugees from neighboring countries, 341 people have died in flooding in recent days, according to the United Nations.

 

Extreme weather is exceptionally costly for African governments. On average, African nations are losing 5 percent of their economies because of floods, droughts and heat, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Many are spending up to a tenth of their budgets just managing extreme weather disasters. Many of those extreme events are driven by the emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases, but Africa is responsible for only a fraction of the world’s annual emissions.

Adaptation is urgent

The latest floods have made it abundantly clear that both rich and poor countries need to invest in shoring up their physical infrastructure and their public policies to minimize the effects of extreme weather.

The United Nations has pressed governments to put in place more early-warning systems, which are relatively inexpensive and potentially effective in saving lives. The U.N. says 101 countries now have early-warning protocols, at least on paper, which is double the number that reported having them in 2015.

There are many feasible measures to reduce the loss of lives caused by flooding. They include giving small amounts of cash to people so they can move out of harm’s way, and putting in emergency water and power systems to prevent the outbreak of disease after floods.

 

Flooding from Tropical Storm Debby in Isle of Palms, S.C., in August.Credit...Marco Bello/Reuters

Harder to do, but essential, local officials and disaster management specialists say, is to prevent deforestation and construction in areas that are prone to heavy flooding and landslides. The floods in Kerala were all the more devastating because of widespread deforestation and unplanned development in ecologically sensitive areas.

In wealthy countries like the United States, local governments have invested heavily in expensive infrastructure. North and South Carolina, for instance, both veterans of powerful storms, have spent millions of dollars retrofitting roads to better withstand extreme rainfall and starting to protect natural flood barriers, like wetlands, from development.

By contrast, low-income countries that are already strapped and weighed down by debts, have been less able to maintain their roads, let alone build flood-resilient infrastructure.

“We need to develop critical infrastructure,” said Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola, an urban planner from Nigeria who is working as a visiting scientist at United Nations University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security. “If you get that right, to some extent, you can lessen the impact of climate change.”

There is little doubt that climate change is making weather wilder and more erratic. That requires preparing for the unexpected.

 “We don’t know exactly when or which type of event will come,” said Diana Urge-Vorsatz, a professor at Central European University and vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Unfortunately there’s no question that more severe events are coming.”