Britain bakes: UK set for five more heatwaves this summer as Sunday becomes joint hottest day of 2023
25 June 2023, 18:40 | Updated: 25 June 2023, 20:06
The UK is set to roast in five more heatwaves by September as Sunday became the joint hottest day of the year so far.
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Forecasters the Weather Company said Britain faces further days of unusually hot temperatures in early and late July, two more at the start of August and another in September.
Extreme heat could also affect 14 days in July thanks to successive blasts of continental air.
The meteorologists' weather warning for England runs till 9am on Monday, with temperatures expected to fall at the start of the week.
But it refused to rule out the possibility that another stint of 40-plus temperatures could blast the UK within weeks.
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Met Office meteorologist Jonathan Vautrey told The Mirror: “We can say there is a greater than normal chance of heatwaves for the whole period of the middle to the end of July.
“We got 40C last year and before that happened no one thought there was an outside chance.
“There’s also a possibility we do continue to see those trends.”
Met Office forecasters also said northern areas will be drier than southern parts of Britain.
Vautrey said in a forecast for the Met Office's Twitter page on Sunday evening that this weekend's hot and thundery weather will be replaced by "fresher conditions" as the week goes on.
That includes more clouds, rain and storms, with westerly winds dragging the conditions across the North Sea from Scandinavia.
Forecasters have also pointed out that climate change is contributing to Britain's severely hot summers.
The Met Office website states: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”
It adds that heatwaves and cold snaps in Britain are definitely affected by man-made climate change, but that the links to heavy rain, dry spells and wind storms remain "inconclusive".
The Met Office forecasts warmer and wetter winters in the long run, as well as hotter and drier summers.
There'll also be more frequent and intense weather extremes across all seasons, it states.
