Summer 2025 is officially the UK’s warmest on record, with the country experiencing four separate heatwaves, according to provisional figures from the Met Office.
The country’s mean temperature from 1 June to 31 August was 16.10°C, exceeding the long-term average by 1.51°C. It surpasses the previous summer record of 15.76°C, which was set in 2018.
This year also pushes the famously hot summer of 1976 out of the top five warmest since records began in 1884. All five of the UK's hottest summers have now occurred since 2000.
Analysis by climate scientists at the Met Office shows that a summer as hot or hotter than 2025 is now 70 times more likely than it would have been in a world without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Persistent warmth pushes up UK averages
This summer’s highest recorded temperature was 35.8°C in Faversham, Kent. Although a way off from the UK’s all-time high of 40.3°C set in July 2022, it was persistent heat that pushed the UK’s average this summer to record levels. The UK experienced four distinct heatwaves, with several days in each stretch seeing temperatures exceed 30°C.
England recorded its warmest June on record, while Wales saw its third warmest and the UK overall its second warmest. Two of this summer’s four heatwaves occurred in June alone.
At the end of the month, scientists from World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international team of scientists who analyse the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events, said that the heat which scorched the south-east of England was made 100 times more likely by climate change.
The trend continued into July, which ranked as the UK’s fifth warmest July on record, before a fourth heatwave in August sealed the season’s record-breaking average.
“The persistent warmth this year has been driven by a combination of factors, including the domination of high-pressure systems, unusually warm seas around the UK and the dry spring soils,” says Met Office scientist Dr Emily Carlisle.
“These conditions have created an environment where heat builds quickly and lingers, with both maximum and minimum temperatures considerably above average.”
This summer also saw a significant shortfall in rainfall. Across the UK, precipitation was just 84 per cent of the long-term average. England, in particular, faced what officials described as “nationally significant” water shortages. Farmers faced significant crop failures, and much of the nation has seen restrictions on water use as reservoirs, rivers and groundwater reserves struggle.
Is climate change making UK summers hotter?
A rapid attribution study by Met Office climate scientists suggests that a summer as hot or hotter than 2025 is now approximately 70 times more likely in today’s climate than it would have been in a world without human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr Mark McCarthy, head of climate attribution at the Met Office, explained that such summers would have occurred roughly once every 340 years in a pre-industrial climate, but are now expected approximately every five years.
Dr McCarthy also said that while the summer of 2025 broke records, even hotter summers are now plausible given current warming trends. “What would have been seen as extremes in the past are becoming more common in our changing climate,” he said.
This follows earlier projections by the Met Office. In 2019, scientists estimated that a summer similar to 2018 could be expected every eight to nine years under current levels of warming. The summer of 2025 broke that record in seven years, consistent with the scientists’ findings.
The Met Office says climate change is now reshaping our definition of what counts as exceptional summer weather in the UK. What was once considered exceptional, it adds, is increasingly becoming typical.
