Talk to any UK citizen for half an hour and you'll generally end up talking about weather. A new report published by the Met Office may give even more reasons for Brits to talk about the weather as experts predict extremely hot summers are coming.
The report released by the Met Office, UK's national weather service, shows that very hot summers will become increasingly common in the coming years. In fact, the report indicates that soaring summer temperatures will be normal by the year 2040.
Last 2003, the UK experienced a searing hot summer that took many UK residents by surprise. Temperatures as high as 101F were reported causing heat related illnesses all over the country. Scientists say that this kind of heat may be normal in future summers.
"Observations of temperature across Europe over the last ten years since 2003 suggest that we are continuing along a track where, by the 2040s, more than half of summers are projected to be warmer than that seen in 2003 if emissions of greenhouse gases continue on their current rising path," says [pdf] the Met Office report.
While the predictions may put a strain on a number of industries such as agriculture, aquaculture and the health industry, there may be a silver lining. Higher temperatures may allow UK farmers to grow a variety of new plants more suitable for hotter temperatures. However, the new predictions show that global warming and climate change will have significant effects on the climate conditions in the UK and the rest of Europe in the near future.
"There is evidence from climate models to suggest that summer 2003 is part of a broadening of the range of temperatures experienced in Europe as a result of climate change: the hot events are getting hotter faster than the cold events are warming," the report says. "This can be understood through an important physical mechanism that contributes to the amplification of heat wave events more generally."
Aside from the hotter summers, experts are also saying that the UK will be experiencing heavier rains during the coming winters. These extremes may be attributed to the variety of seasonal weather that the UK experiences.
"Further research is urgently needed to deliver robust detection of changes in storminess and daily/hourly rain rates," says the Met Office. "The topics considered here represent substantial scientific challenges but new observing systems and higher resolution computational models of the climate system coming online now are providing new insights that promise progress and the continuing improvement of UK adaptation advice."
