Scientists have warned Britain could face temperatures of up to 40C in the next 10 years as frequency of heatwaves increases.
Temperatures across Britain soared last week with England registering an annual high and Northern Ireland saw an all-time high.
The Met Office was forced to issue its first ever hot weather warning across the UK.
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Experts are now warning if carbon emissions continue to rise then soaring temperatures could become the norm, which could be a killer for thousands of people.
More than people 2,550 died during the the three heatwaves last year according to figures released by Public Health England.
Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "The reality is that we are not set up for it in this country.
"Other hotter countries do not see the same mortality that we do. But this is going to become more frequent and we need to start to prepare.
"At 40C even healthy people will not survive."
Chloe Brimicombe, a heatwave hazards researcher at the University of Reading, told the Sunday Times: "Southern England could see its first 40-degree day within the next ten years.
"Most of our rail network would not be able to run in those sorts of temperatures.
"We would see increased pressure on water resources, productivity would be reduced, and it could affect our livestock and our crops."
Dr Rob Thompson, a meteorologist at the University of Reading, said: "Heatwaves are one of the weather extremes that are most easily linked to climate change which is already affecting us here in the UK.
"British heatwaves are already hotter and last longer, compared to just a few decades ago.
"The hottest day of the year in the UK is on average nearly 1C warmer now than the average in the period of the 1960s to the 1980s, and extended spells of warm weather last more than double the length.
"We can expect that extreme summer heatwaves of the type that can kill people in the UK will become a regular occurrence, hitting us on average every other summer by the middle of the century, under current trends of increasing emissions and warming."
All five of our warmest days have been since 1990.
The Met Office said in a 2020 study that 40C days in Britain could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence.
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