As the UK is engulfed in its second major heatwave of the year, a senior meteorologist has warned that the country is on course to experience regular ‘super heatwaves’ that will have a devastating impact.
Jim Dale said that the UK and the rest of the world is in danger of ‘boiling over’ as extreme heat becomes commonplace due to climate change.
Mr Dale spoke as the country bakes in a second heatwave that could see the hottest June on record, as temperatures are expected to reach 40°C.
The blazing weather has resulted in the closures of schools across the country, train and London Underground disruption, and a danger to life warning being issued.
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Mr Dale has spent the last 40 years warning about the impact of global warming and now believes the planet is close to a tipping point.
‘Yes, from time to time, in the past 50 or 100 years, we have had heatwaves,’ he said. ‘However, the top 10 global and UK temperatures have nearly all come in the last 20 years.
‘This is the new abnormal.
‘The dots are very clear, and they make a picture; one of records falling left, right and centre.
‘It’s not just air temperature records, it’s sea temperatures too, with record levels in the Mediterranean even in June, never mind July and August.
‘The oceans act as a boiler house as they absorb and harbour the heat. The more they warm up, the more likely we are to see the temperatures we are seeing today.’
Wildfires and flooding
Mr Dale views the devastating wildfires and floods that have broken out around the world in recent years as an inevitable result of global warming.
Earlier this week, Londoners were hit with an early morning thunderstorm that caused two house fires and biblical rainfall that resulted in localised flooding, forcing the closure of Balham Tube station and the suspension of the Elizabeth Line at Heathrow.
Last summer, wildfires raged across Europe. In Turkey, at least 10 firefighters died while responding to dangerous wildfires. One person died in Aude, France, last August, and evacuations were ordered in both France and Spain due to similar wildfires.
‘When you get these extremes, it points to one thing: ordinary weather, and ordinary heatwaves, are becoming super-heated,’ Mr Dale said.
‘There are records continually being broken,’ Dale added, highlighting the 46°C recorded in southwest Spain last summer, which was their hottest June weather ever.
‘These records are not being broken for any arbitrary reason.
‘They are being broken because of climate change, record levels of CO2 and record levels of fossil fuel emissions. Along with the records being broken, pointing to a globally warming environment, the thing to add is the speed at which it is happening. It’s going in one direction only: it’s gathering pace. The more energy you put into the atmosphere, the oceans, the more those molecules fly around and you see these increases.
‘It’s like boiling milk on a stove where you turn the heat up, you get the steam, then the bubbles and then it boils over.
‘We are at the bubbling stage, and I don’t see anything at this moment in time that would take the dial down.’
The red heat warning
The exceptional red warning for ‘danger to life’ level heat is now in place, covering a swathe of southern England and Wales from parts of Kent to Swansea.
This is the second time the Met Office has issued the red warning for heat, the first time being during the summer 2022 scorcher.
Globally, heatwaves have been linked with rises in heat-related deaths by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
‘When you have these heat domes, or heat spikes which last a day or two, you have to ask what the result is,’ Mr Dale said.
‘The main one is that people die.
‘The WHO estimate that between 2022 and 2024, there were around 160,000 excess heat deaths across Europe, in other words, deaths that would not have happened if a certain temperature hadn’t been reached for several days.
‘Things will start cooling down and go back to normal. Temperate zones like ours dip in and dip out, but when we dip in, we dip in with a vengeance.
‘We are getting now to a point of total extremes, in the UK and in places where it is more profound; in the Middle East, where we’ve seen 50°C plus, in the Far East, America, Africa and Southern Europe.
‘These are unlivable temperatures.’
Can the UK adapt to rising temperatures?
Changes in areas ranging from diet to house building need to take place for the UK to adapt to a warmer climate, Mr Dale said.
He also believes that climate change denial, which includes the assertion that the rising temperatures are not caused by human factors such as greenhouse gas emissions, needs to be debunked.
The meteorologist has considered the impact of climate change in his book ‘Weather or Not?’, and has the mantra that ‘weather is king and climate is the kingmaker’.
‘The danger is here and now but it’s particularly for our children and grandchildren, because they’ll be the ones picking up the ashes,’ he said.
‘They’ll have the difficulty going forward because 40°C becomes 50°C very quickly within their lifetimes.
‘Fifty degrees for six or seven days in a row in the UK is a disaster, for the infrastructure, for roads, for the NHS, for people, you name it.
‘This should be the top subject, because it’s coming.
‘Forty years ago, I said that we were moving towards a Mediterranean climate. What I and others have predicted in previous decades is coming true now, and we need to act faster.’
The UK is committed to reaching net zero by 2050, which would mean total greenhouse gas emissions being equal to those removed from the atmosphere in order to limit global warming.