Climate already changing in UK: Met Office

The UK's climate is already changing as recent decades have been warmer, wetter and sunnier in the country than in the 20th century, according to an annual climate report published by the Met Office.

Year 2020 was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest on record for the country, said the 'State of the UK Climate', an annual publication providing an up-to-date assessment of Britain's climate published on Thursday.

No other year had ranked in the top 10 for all three variables for the UK, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Met Office report warned that the country has warmed at a broadly consistent but slightly higher rate than the observed change in global mean temperature.


For Britain, the period 1991 to 2020 has been on average 0.3 degree Celsius warmer than 1981 to 2010 and 0.9 degree Celsius warmer than 1961 to 1990, with warming across all months and countries, said the report.

"A lot of people think climate change is in the future, but this proves the climate is already changing here in the UK," the report's lead author Mike Kendon, climate information scientist at the Met Office, told the BBC on Thursday.

"As it continues to warm we are going to see more and more extreme weather such as heatwaves and floods," said Kendon.


The report, based on observations of temperature, precipitation, sunshine and wind speed from the UK's land weather station network as managed by the Met Office and a number of key partners and co-operating volunteers, has been published as a special issue of the International Journal of Climatology.

It aims to provide a summary of the country's weather and climate through the calendar year 2020, alongside the historical context for a number of essential climate variables.-IANS