This is it - climate change is really beginning to bite

[Wowwee1234]

We know the climate is changing and it is us. This particular heat wave feels like the next step up after a winter of devastating storms.

YABU - It's just too hot
YANBU - This is the taste of things to come.

Let’s be honest - we’re fucked. It’s irreversible and anything we do now is just either buying a little more time or mildly negating the impact. Shame, as with a bit of collective effort on the part of our leaders, it could have been different. Most of them will have shuffled off by the time this shit show gets really serious.

Our only option is to adapt, as best we can. But we aren’t even doing that because we’re led by donkeys.

It wasn't sometimes even hotter in the 60s and 70s than now.

Over the past few days some parts of the UK were over 30°C.

The only time that happened in the 60s and 70s was in June 1976.

In June 2005, 2017 and 2020 it went over 30°C.

In 2022 it went over 40°C. For the first time ever.

Its also the average temperature is rising. Not just extreme temperatures. So we apparently just had to hottest spring/june on record even though there have been hotter days. So june 76 had the hottest June day still, but this June's average was warmer.

Noones going to notice if its one degree warmer. We just see the extremes.

@EscapeToSuffolk

@Buzyizzy217

I was a young mother in 1976.
It reached 35.6 in Cheltenham and 35.9 in Southampton.

The drought lasted 18 months.

There were other hot summers too but not quite as high as 76.

I remember them all well. We used to say they were proper Summers.
Year in year out.

The reason I remember '76 so well is because I had a baby son and it was a bit of a struggle keeping him cool and safe from the sun.

Bliss to you maybe. Difference is the extreme weather in other parts of the World will cause mass migration as places become uninhabitable. Irony being that the same politics in this country that is anti-immigration is also denying manmade climate change

And yet another typical Brit response - there is a lot more to the world than Europe you know. My elderly parents, grandparents, and presumably the generation before that coped fine with the heat, and so do most of the elderly here. While I'm sure the heat does take its toll on the very frail elderly I've never actually heard of any who have been affected. My late DF spent his mid to late 80s living in an apartment which got extremely hot, he knew what to do to cool it down as much as possible and just got on with life - and he had a heart condition and asthma. If didn't matter how hot it was my late DM would say it was a lovely day - she hated the cold.

Youare completely wrong here. It has been confirmed that some of this year's temperatures are the highest on récord, plus there freak floods occuring all over the world and food crops are suffering because the climate change

@SouthernNights59 but you need to adjust for the humidity to work out whether the heat is tolerable. And then take account of age too, because older people tolerate humid heat less.

And the wildfires are a new thing!

Idk when ocean currents will do this, but reading a bit about it I find it more concerning than the hotter days.

There are a lot of ill-informed opinions on here!
It's not that we've never had hot summer spells before, it's that we are now experiencing more frequent and more extreme hot spells. The data shows that. We are also having more extremes in our rainfall patterns. All these changes are as predicted by climate modelling.
@Theunamedcat why haven't we learned from the last 50 years and adapted? Because we needed to gather the data to prove global warming was real and not natural variation and to prove the link to human activity before investing the huge sums needed, PLUS the fossil fuel industry has worked tirelessly to undermine that science over much of the last 50 yrs as it did for smoking/cancer.
No we're not completely fucked - yet - and there is some amazing new technology out there but progress is too slow.
@Comedycook you'll believe it when we have 30deg at Christmas? By then we really will be royally fucked.....

I’m not an expert on climate change, but I do know that maternity wards will be pretty quiet in 9 months time

Yes, to be fair it was a eurocentric response. But you were saying it only happens in Britain that people are concerned. . Now im a typical British fir saying it happens in Europe too and they are concerned.

here are reports of people dying in the heat at the Hajj and how that's an increasing concern. And lots of news reports about heatwaves in India and its a growing concern because they think they are underestimating the numbers dying.

I have absolutely no doubt the vast majority of people worldwide are fine and getting on with it, including the moany old brits. I just don't think dying of heat is a special British thing that only exists here.

It might be more of a British thing that people are unconcerned.

London. This week 2025.
Hottest day 34.7

Southampton. 1976
Hottest day 35.9

50 years ago and we're all still here.

And your point is ... what exactly?
That it doesn't matter what we do because the earth (Gaia) will cope?

Yes. It was very hot.

This june was hotter on average and in a bigger geographical area.

That June was an anomaly during a generally cooler decade. That's why people bang on about it.

This sort of weather is happening more often now.

I keep reading about how humid the UK is, so the other day I researched it compared to where I live, and was surprised to find it is actually slightly more humid here. MNers seem to think the UK is the most humid place on earth, it really isn't.

No it will manage the planet. Even if that means wiping out humanity.

The thing is yes the weather here is changing and getting warmer than we are used to, but and I'm afraid it is a big but! Saying highest/ longest etc for heat/rain etc since records began is not really a good indicator. Records/ data collection of temperature etc have only been going for possibly 300 years? Maybe a bit longer? We have no idea what the temperatures were like in the for instance the 1700s and as others have pointed out these things change over a long period of time. We are still coming out of an ice age and that took 1000s of years from start to finish so we really should expect climate to change within the natural cycle of our planet. We could individually change all our living conditions to try and make an impact but it is highly unlikely to have any difference. We are all aware that humans are destroying the planet for ourselves but as far as the nature of the climate cycle I can't see how we can have any major impact. What our useless government should be doing is preparing for a shift in the weather. As in building more reservoirs, sorting housing for different conditions, putting effort into our transport systems, building out health services and helping people to understand how to cope not scaring the crap out of them via the media when it's either hot/cold/windy or wet.

On that front we are definitely comparing ourselves to dry places and not humid places. I think people are thinking holiday in the med not Malaysia. My understanding is the UK is moderately humid and it varies a lot from day to day.

I actually think this particular heatwaves is pretty dry

You're claiming that the previous poster is wrong when you have no idea where in the UK they live. Sure, you may live somewhere down south where grapes have always grown, but that doesn't mean that they live where you do.

2022 broke numerous records. The hottest recorded temperature that year was five degrees hotter than the hottest temperature in 1976 that all of the Boomers are blathering on about in this thread ("we've always had hot days..."). No day in 1976 even makes the top ten hottest days, five of which happened within the last decade.

This is forming part of a worrying pattern. Heatwaves are happening far more frequently than they did before. So are other extreme weather events - Atlantic hurricanes are becoming much more frequent for example. An increasing number of areas in the US are now uninsurable.

The scary thing is that it's changing quickly, tangibly, and this is just the very beginning of a huge irreversible change that will gain momentum. Lots of people are being unreasonable, but that's just human nature. We're mostly morons with this stuff. Easier to be in denial.
Ultimately we are all going to die some day, and most of us live in denial about that too.

But it’s not every year, is it? Last summer, we had one isolated heatwave for one week at the end of July. I remember because my daughter was at pony camp.

I do believe in climate change, totally but who knows whether this is specifically indicative of anything because last year I was hearing everywhere that climate change was going to look like colder temperatures for us in the UK, hence the summers getting rainy and cold. This year it has switched up.