Forget Cerberus – these heatwaves will soon be Britain’s new normal

Europe is sweltering in a heatwave, just as the UK did last year. But as we see record temperature after record temperature fall, what does the future hold? Nick Ferris investigates what that means for Earth – and for us

People watch a forest burning on La Palma in the Canary Islands on Saturday (Europa Pres/AP)

Europe braces for temperatures touching 49C. Fires rage in the forests of Spain. More than a dozen cities across Italy are put on red heat alert. The Acropolis is closed to tourists as holidaymakers buckle in the midday sun.

The current Cerberus heatwave in Southern Europe, we have been told, could well lead to “potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe”, while we have also been told that the first week of July was the hottest week ever recorded worldwide.

This year has also seen the hottest June on record in the UK, with an average temperature of 15.8C during the month. And, just last year, the temperature in the UK crossed 40C for the first time ever.

But this is not an anomaly; it is becoming routine. Every year, summer comes around, and meteorologists tell us that we have just experienced the hottest day, week or month on record.

We now know that the hottest 10 years in human history have all taken place since 2010, and that the last decade has seen extreme weather events like floods and wildfires become a regular fixture in the news. But just how bad can we expect things to get over the next 10 years?

Tim Benton, director of the environment programme at the think tank Chatham House, tells The Independent: “The trend we have seen over the last decade is only going to continue, and the likelihood of seeing a terrible weather event or other climate impact is going to be much higher than it has previously been.”

The latest scientific literature and climate gives us a sense of what these “climate impacts” might be.

Firstly there is temperature. It will come as little surprise that temperatures are expected to keep trending upwards: According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), there is currently a 98 per cent likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.

The El Nino climate event currently ongoing in the Pacific Ocean is also expected to particularly raise the global temperature over the next two to three years. As a result of El Nino, the WMO thinks there is a 66 per cent chance that the world’s average temperature may cross 1.5C above the pre-industrial average for the first time in a single year. By contrast, the average global temperature in 2022 was about 1.15C above the baseline.

Benton adds that there is a chance that the temperature in a decade may surpass current trends and expectations, as climate models have a track record of underestimating risks.

“The Met Office published a study in 2020 that suggested the likelihood of the UK experiencing 40C was around one in 100-300 at present”, said Benton. “The UK then passed 40C in 2022, far sooner than anyone had expected.”

If temperatures are to keep soaring, then the risk of extreme weather events like flooding is also set to grow. A June paper published in the scientific journal Nature found that for every increase in temperature by 1C, the density of the average major downpour increases by 15 per cent.

“We can see the reality of this pattern in how – following the hot weather in recent weeks – floods are currently all over the news”, says Benton. Recent weeks have seen major flooding events reported on in India, the US and the UK.

Wildfires are another extreme weather event that we will be at greater risk of in a decade’s time. Before 2010, wildfires were rare phenomena in the UK. But last year more than 20,000 hectares of UK land were burnt, with major fires in Yorkshire and East London burning significant numbers of homes.

“We know that as the planet warms due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, almost every region in the world is facing longer fire seasons, with an increased risk of fires starting in dry vegetation”, Matthew Kasoar, from Imperial College, told The Independent. “The UK is no exception to this pattern: Just this spring saw the second largest fire on record in Scotland.”

The rising temperature is also set to impact nature and biodiversity in a big way. Already, the British countryside is in crisis, with insect populations declining by 60 per cent in the last 20 years, and 50 per cent of bird populations declining since 2015. Higher temperatures are likely to exacerbate this trend.

“Most species, including plants, have evolved to live healthily in a narrow temperature range”, said Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at Imperial College. For farmers, this means that extreme heat can also “kill or stunt crops, leading to decreased yields and more expensive produce”.

A 2021 landmark technical report issued by the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) advisory body elaborates on some of these risks. It says that climate change phenomena including “water scarcity, wildfire [and] flooding” all pose a threat to native biodiversity, as do threats like “coastal flooding [and] erosion” as well as the rise in “pests, pathogens and invasive non-native species” that is expected as the climate warms.

The report also says that “wetter winters and hotter drier summers” may well lead to bad crop seasons, and there may then be “major losses in crop production” which could eventually impact UK food security.

The same CCC report points to growing risks to other areas including infrastructure, with power plants threatened by extreme weather events like thunderstorms and flash floods, and roads and rail track threatened by both high heat and extreme weather. The reliance of so many other areas on infrastructure networks means that any impact could have a “cascading” effect on other areas, says the report.

Then there is the effect that rising temperatures has on human health, particularly among the elderly, which will only increase over the next decade as summers become hotter and hotter.

“As well as direct deaths from heatstroke, heatwaves are dangerous for the elderly because extreme heat compromises the body’s ability to deal with existing health problems”, explained Imperial’s Friederike Otto.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows how devastating this can be: During the five heat-periods that occurred between June and August 2022, 56,303 deaths occurred in England and Wales, which is 3,271 deaths (6.2 per cent) above the five-year average. Heat-periods are defined as a day – or days – when the mean temperature in the Midlands is greater than 20C.

This data chimes with a pattern that shows there have consistently been more deaths recorded on heat-period days than on non-heat period days over the past decade.

At least over the next decade, the UK’s relative wealth and temperate climate will likely protect it from some of the more extreme direct climate impacts that may be recorded elsewhere in the world. But if such impacts do occur elsewhere in the world, that does not mean we will not feel indirect effects.

“If a severe drought or weather event occurs in a fragile country, that could lead to things like famine, human displacement, conflict, and the rise of nationalism and populism,” said Tim Benton. “We could see mass migration to the UK, and other things like disruption to our food system and supply chains, like we saw after Covid.”

Benton adds that climate change also increases the risk of another pandemic. “If you chop down rainforests, and if the climate is heating up, then you are rewiring ecosystems, and putting together animals that don’t normally live together,” he said. “This increases the chance of diseases jumping from one animal to another.”

Every year that passes increases the likelihood of risks such as these becoming a reality – even if we cannot know for certain exactly when.