This July, the United Kingdom experienced a heatwave like never before with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees. Hundreds of excess deaths were recorded during this period and unprecedented measures were put into place such as warnings to stay indoors and work from home where possible. A hosepipe ban will affect southern England as the country experienced its driest ever July and temperatures level out once again this month above 30 degrees. Since records began, the UK has not seen weather quite so hot as this — but how bad is it really? Are we exaggerating when we complain of severe sunburn and a lack of air-conditioning when other places around the globe seem to have it consistently worse?
The UK has thus far been seen as a ‘cold country’. With wet and gloomy winters and mild summers, it is not a place the rest of the world regards as too sweltering to visit. But with the ever-persistent issue of climate change causing a rise in natural disasters and extreme weather across the globe, Britain has begun to look and feel different in recent years. It is plain to see that most British people aren’t used to the hot weather as they form queues at ice-cream stands, seek shade under parasols at the beach, and arm their homes with fans on the highest setting. But the UK is not built for such weather — houses are tightly insulated, equipped with double-glazed windows, carpeted floorboards and thick bedding which is perfect for wintertime. It is extremely rare to see a home with air-conditioning, never mind the ceiling fans and refreshingly thin bed sheets that are commonplace in warmer countries. It is much harder here to find relief from the heat.
There are plenty of places used to such weather and ‘worse’ still. 40 degrees is nothing in comparison to much of the world; the average July temperatures of North African oasis towns such as Ghadames, Libya and Kebili, Tunisia, sit above this. Outback towns in South Australia measured over 50 degrees back in the 1960s. A cave in Mexico which reaches a depth of 300 metres underground records air temperatures of 58 degrees, and coupled with over 90% humidity, it means the area is mostly unexplored — the average human wouldn’t last more than ten minutes in these conditions (Mulko, 2022). At ground level, the small town of Aziziya, Libya registered a temperature of 58 degrees a hundred years ago, the hottest the planet has ever seen; however, the record was invalidated in 2012, and the honour now goes to Death Valley in California where the mercury hit 57 in the desert.
However, just because high temperatures are the norm for certain countries does not mean they are immune to the consequences of climate change. Pacific island nations such as Kiribati, Fiji and Vanuatu (countries where the average year-round temperature is over 27 degrees) have been battered in recent years with cyclones and droughts. Rising sea levels not only worsen these natural disasters but could also threaten a country’s very existence — the UN estimates that some island nations will be fully submerged underwater in just a few decades (Abadi, 2022).
Similarly, many places in Western Europe continue to break records with the heat and go beyond what was previously thought as worst case scenarios. At the start of August, five areas of southern France were placed under an orange weather alert as firefighters fought wildfires that had grown out of control. Temperatures of 40 degrees were recorded across the country (Chessum, 2022). By mid-August, the UK will feel the after-effects of France’s hot weather as the high pressure system travels north.
There’s no question that the UK’s extreme weather conditions this summer have been worsened by climate change. A couple of years ago, Met Office scientists reckoned the chances of Britain seeing 40-degree weather was around one in 100 — a steep rise of just one in 1,000 in a human-free climate. Models had estimated that greenhouse gas emissions would increase temperatures in the July heatwave by two degrees, but when analysing historical weather records, it was evident that temperatures were four degrees higher than what they would have been without humans interfering with the climate (Horton, 2022). Unfortunately, events like July’s heatwave and any subsequent droughts, crop destruction and loss of human life will become more frequent as the Earth warms.
There seems to be one silver lining: a heatwave of the same magnitude we have experienced this July has only a 1% chance of happening next year. A year is not a lot of time for conditions to change too drastically. Nevertheless, there is clearly room for error. Many assume that such groundbreaking temperatures will become the norm for UK summers, and accept that generations to come will simply have to find a way to deal with the heat. Unless carbon emissions are quickly and drastically cut, thousands more across the country will suffer the consequences.
Figure 1: Crowds gather on a British beach, The New York Times.
References
Abadi, M. (2022). ‘These island nations could be underwater in as little as 50 years’, Business Insider [online]. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/these-island-nations-could-be-underwater-in-as-little-as-fifty-years-2015-12?r=US&IR=T (Accessed 04/08/22).
Chessum, V. (2022). ‘Europe heatwave: Fire alerts hit swathes of France as dangerous 40C plume heads to UK’, Daily Express [online]. Available at: https://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/1648886/Europe-heatwave-France-regions-alert-fires-as-40C-temperatures-hit/amp (Accessed 04/08/22).
Horton, H. (2022). ‘Climate breakdown made UK heatwave 10 times more likely, study finds’, The Guardian [online]. Available at: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/28/climate-breakdown-made-uk-heatwave-10-times-more-likely-study-finds (Accessed 04/08/22).
Mulko, M. (2022). ‘Suffering the heat wave? Here are the top 10 hottest places on Earth right now’, Interesting Engineering [online]. Available at: https://interestingengineering.com/science/heat-wave-top-10-hottest-places-earth (Accessed 04/08/22).
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