Climate Change to Make U.K. Heat Waves More Common and Intense

(Bloomberg) -- Britain’s record-breaking summer heat last year is set to happen more regularly and with more intensity because of climate change.

That’s the conclusion of a study by the U.K.’s Met Office of the summer of 2018, which was tied for the hottest in more than a century. The report adds to a growing body of research that points to the growing and immediate effects of global warming.

“The U.K. has always endured weather extremes, including heatwaves, and there is no doubt that summer 2018 would always have been a notable period,” Mark McCarthy, the paper’s lead author, said in a statement. “However, our study found that climate change also added to the intensity, making it an even more dramatic year.”

The extreme heat is likely to become a more common occurrence.

A summer like 2018 now has an 11% to 12% chance of occurring in any given year, 30 times more likely than would be expected from natural factors alone, McCarthy said. By 2050, such summer temperatures could be normal, according to the Met Office.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Mathis in London at wmathis2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Andrew Reierson, Lars Paulsson

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