The UK is experiencing its hottest recorded temperatures this week with much of the country’s infrastructure struggling to cope. What will it take to adapt to far more regular heatwaves?
Britain has been sweltering under exceptionally high temperatures this week as workplaces issue stay-at-home advice, trains are cancelled and schools shut their gates. The extreme weather is “entirely consistent” with the climate crisis, the chief meteorologist at the Met Office has said, warning that such heat could become a regular feature by the end of the century.
The Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, tells Hannah Moore that this heatwave will be a wake-up call to many in the UK to what future summers will regularly feel like unless the world as a whole can drastically reduce its reliance on burning fossil fuels. It’s not just the UK experiencing record highs, its everywhere from the Middle East to the Arctic.