As an island squeezed between the vast Atlantic Ocean and continental Europe, the UK sits at the intersection of a whole series of major air masses. That’s why the country’s climate is so changeable and that variability also makes mapping some climate changes more difficult.
Rainfall patterns fluctuate much more than temperature, the Met Office says, but it finds that, as well as warming up, the UK is also getting wetter, with rainfall increasing significantly during the winter. Between October and March, rainfall in 2015-2024 was 16% higher than in 1961–1990, it says.
Behind all these changes is the relentless rise in average temperatures driven by climate change, the Met Office says. Global temperatures have risen by over 1.3C since the industrial revolution as humans continue to release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.
The Met Office calculates that the UK is warming at a rate of around 0.25C per decade, with the 2015-2024 period 1.24C warmer than the period between 1961-1990.
As the UK’s national weather service, the Met Office is the custodian of the Central England Temperature record, the longest-running weather record in the world, based on measurements taken using thermometers and other instruments. It spans from 1659 to the present and it shows that recent warming has far exceeded any observed temperatures in over 300 years.
The last three years have been in the UK’s top five warmest on record, with 2024 the fourth warmest year in records dating back to 1884.
Even a small shift in temperatures can significantly increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, as the graph below shows.
Look how, as the distribution of temperatures shifts, those that were previously extreme are brought into the range and new extremes become significantly more likely.
