Met Office Report: 2025 Was the Warmest Year on Record in the UK

The Met Office published a report stating that weather once considered extreme is becoming the new normal in the UK. The analysis found that 2025 was the warmest year on record since data collection began in 1884, with the four most recent years ranking among the five warmest overall. Annual temperatures have risen about 0.25C per decade since the 1980s.

The decade 2016-2025 averaged 1.33C warmer than the 1961-1990 period. The hottest day of the year in southern England is now typically 4.5C warmer than in that earlier baseline. Northern areas of Britain now record temperatures previously typical of southern England.

Areas including the Vale of York and Lancashire now match conditions once seen in Greater London during 1961-1990. The number of days above 30C and nights above 18C more than quadrupled in Greater London over the same comparison period. Mike Kendon, a Met Office climate information scientist, said the data show the climate of the 20th Century has now gone on annual, seasonal, monthly and daily timescales.

He added that the UK is seeing the emergence of new warmer climates in the southeast of England and described the warming as moving north and uphill. More than 2,700 people may have died from heat-related causes in England and Wales during exceptionally hot weather in May and June 2025, according to estimates from Imperial College London, the Met Office and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In spring 2025 most of England and Wales received less than half the 1991-2020 average rainfall, making it England's driest spring in over 100 years.

The total volume of water moving through English rivers from March to August 2025 was the second lowest since 1961. Soils across central and southern England were drier than average for the time of year by the end of June 2025. Kendon also stated that what used to be viewed as extreme is increasingly considered normal.