Experts say recent weather is evidence that ‘climate is already changing here in the UK’
2020 was the first year in which rainfall, temperature and sunshine rankings all reached a top ten spot in the UK.
According to The Royal Meteorological Society, 2020 was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest year on record.
Flash floods intervalled with miniature heat waves have kept Brits on their toes this summer. This inconsistency has been labelled as evidence that climate change is here, and it is happening. Professor Hayler Fowler from the UK Climate Resilience Programme told the BBC that floods such as these “will increase five fold by the 2080s” if carbon emissions are not cut.
Unforeseen weather patterns have a direct link with fossil fuel emissions.
One damning report by the International Energy Agency published in May argues that new investment in fossil fuel technologies, specifically oil, must end this summer in order to dodge the damaging effects of climate change.
Following its current trajectory, Brits in future summers may well resent the idea of a more “Med-like climate”. Unforeseen weather patterns have a direct link with fossil fuel emissions and curbing them with a productive COP26 this November may well be the policymakers’ only chance to reduce this impact.
Editor: Orla Mackinnon
