By general consensus the British summer of 2024 was a bit rubbish – even though the numbers say it was about average. What is behind this clash of perceptions? The Met Office socio-meteorologist Helen Roberts says it is because recent hot summers have changed our expectations.
“There have been multiple heatwaves in recent years, including the unprecedented extreme heat in 2022 as well as the long, hot lockdown summer of 2020,” says Roberts. She says that two psychological effects, recency bias and the availability heuristic – in which we perceive things through the lens either of recent events or memories that spring readily to mind – “mean we get used to these extremes and then expect more of the same”.
Sociological research shows how the notorious hot summer of 1976 gave rise to many stories and memories: roads melting, news reports of reservoirs drying up and personal anecdotes of sweltering days. These have tended to eclipse memories of more typical summers.
Roberts notes that another effect, called salience bias, means we notice and focus on exceptions and extremes rather than the average.
Some researchers even believe that extreme weather plays a meta-cognitive role in organising memories. While in earlier centuries people reckoned dates from coronations or royal marriages, now we order our recollections around scorching summers, epic storms and snowy winters.
These effects explain why the unremarkable summer of 2024 will probably be forgotten, while 2020 and 2022 will be fondly remembered as typical summers of the 2020s.
