The UK has entered its fifth successive heatwave. More than 70% England and all of Wales are now under drought conditions. That means 45 million people are now living in a drought area in England, with more than 27 million facing water use restrictions. Dangerous wildfires are have been blazing across the country. Firefighters have responded to nearly 1,000 wildfires across England and Wales this year, according to the National Fire Chiefs Council.
In May and June alone, 2,877 deaths were linked to extreme hot weather in the UK. The lack of water is having a dire effect on our farmers – this year’s harvest is predicted to be the worst on record, leading to higher prices and smaller vegetables in supermarkets.
The average maximum temperature for July and August between 1991-2020 was just under 22˚C. This is why British people traditionally go on holiday to somewhere warm and sunny.
But in 2026 we have already had 40 days with temperatures above 30˚C. This extremely hot summer should come as no surprise. Like many other climate scientists, I have been warning politicians and policymakers about the impacts of climate change for more than 30 years. Still, they often seem surprised when extreme weather hits.
And this hot dry summer is the new normal for the UK and Europe. Summers will get even hotter and drier in the future – especially with the additional impacts of a super El Niño (the warm phase of a natural fluctuation in the Earth’s climate system) next year. The summer of 2026 will be one of the coolest you experience in your lifetime. The good news is that we can plan for these now normal extreme summers.
It is not just the UK suffering. Western Europe recorded its hottest June-July period in history, with average temperatures sitting 2.79°C above normal.
Europe seems to be warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Water levels on the Rhine and the Danube rivers are so low that cargo ships cannot operate. More than a half dozen nuclear generators have shut or reduced output due to cooling difficulties. Agricultural yield estimates have been cut with crops harvested late, and maize and sunflower already suffering a 6-7% loss in July. Heat curtails human productivity and has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, with Germany alone reporting more than 10,000 heat-related deaths.
What should the PM do?
Prime minister Andy Burnham has chaired the government’s second emergency climate Cobra meeting. So far, the only outcome of this meeting is that the prime minister has urged retailers to stop selling disposable barbecues to tackle one of the potential causes of wildfires.
Previous UK governments have had expert advice on what to do to prepare the UK for the impact of climate change – and successive governments have failed to act. Hopefully, Burnham will be different because urgent climate action and effective disaster responses require planning and investing in our safer future. These are my top three recommendations.
First, our water supplies must be secured.
We can mitigate against the worst effects of droughts and supports farmers and industry by having adequate storage of water. Since the water companies in England and Wales were privatised in 1989, they have paid out £85 billion in dividends – money that could have been invested in desperately needed water storage and reduced losses from leaks. It is time to invest in our water infrastructure in such away that the money does not go in to shareholders pockets but goes on building new reservoirs.
Second, cooling needs to be made mandatory for the most vulnerable people.
We need legalisation to ensure that all care homes, hospitals and new build homes have adequate air conditioning to deal with these hot summers. In 2026 over one in ten days will have had temperatures above 30˚C. That mild British weather has gone forever. Now we need a government-backed programme to retrofit every home in the country so that within the next ten years, all homes have cheap efficient heating and cooling systems to make people safe. We also need to know where our vulnerable population is and make sure they have access to public funded cool spaces as they do in France.
Third, the UK needs to massively expand its electricity generation. With more extreme weather, the demand for air conditioning will grow exponentially both in the public and private sector. We also need to diversify our energy sources and collaborate more closely with neighbouring countries on energy sharing.
During droughts across Europe, traditional and nuclear power stations have already had to shut down or reduce output as they rely on vast quantities of water to operate. Solar panels work even better in heatwaves so Burnham’s government could roll out a massive expansion of cheap renewable energy to lower energy costs and satisfy the increasing demand.
Adapting to the new hot dry summers is not difficult. Many countries deal with these sorts of extreme conditions every single year. But it takes planning and investment in basic infrastructure, not just another emergency Cobra meeting.
Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, UCL
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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