Last year was the fourth warmest on record for the UK, the Met Office said, in another “clear illustration that our climate is changing, right now”.
Provisional figures for 2024 from the Met Office showed an average temperature for the UK of 9.78C, 0.64C above the 1991-2020 average and putting it in fourth place for the warmest year following 2022, 2023 and 2014.
Organizations
While the Met Office said UK weather was variable, the long term trends showed clear evidence in this country of how the global climate was warming.
The UK figures come after the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed that worldwide, 2024 was set to be the hottest year ever recorded, breaking the previous record which was set just a year before in 2023.
The UN’s secretary-general Antonio Guterres said the world had endured a “decade of deadly heat”, with 2024 capping 10 years of unprecedented temperatures in what he described as “climate breakdown, in real time”.
For the UK, top 10 warmest years in the records dating back to the 19th century have occurred since the year 2000, with five of the 10 between 2015 and 2024.
Every year of the most recent decade has been warmer than the 1991-2020 long-term average and the UK has not had a top 10 coldest year since 1963, the Met Office said.
Met Office senior scientist Mike Kendon said: “With 2024 joining the top 10 warmest years for the UK’s annual temperature series, once again this is a clear illustration that our climate is changing, right now, and we continue to head up this warming curve.
“The fact that all 10 of the most recent years have been above the 1991-2020 average demonstrates that this recent period, entirely within my own adult lifetime, is a stark reminder of just how fast our climate is changing.
“We have not had a top 10 coldest year in the UK since 1963.
“The UK receives weather influences from all points of the compass and we are all familiar with just how variable our weather can often be from one day to the next.
“However, the long-term pattern in the observations is undeniable: the global climate is warming and there is clear evidence of this in the UK’s own temperature series.”
The Met Office also said 2024 was “another relatively wet year”.
The UK saw an average of 1,242mm of rain, enough to rank 2024 as the 17th wettest year since rainfall records began in 1836.
In England, the counties of Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire each recorded their second-wettest year on record.
The previous year, 2023, was the UK’s seventh wettest on record, with an average of 1,318.6mm of rain.
