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The day the mercury soared - The UK's hottest day

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On July 25th 2019 the UK saw a new record maximum temperature of 38.7C at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Understandably this made big news. It was one of a number of high temperature records set in 2019 and if you think you hear more about hot weather records than cold ones, you'd be right.

I remember July 25th 2019 very well. The day had been flagged in advance as a very hot one, the peak of a heatwave and one that could see the UK's highest temperature yet.

I was on presenting duty that day and every hour we were following the latest temperatures as they came in to see just how high they went.

At the end of the day itself it seemed as though the record hadn't been broken and a temperature of 38.5C at Brogdale in Kent in 2003 would stand as the UK's highest. But not all temperature data comes in instantly and the next day the Met Office announced it was verifying a higher temperature from Cambridge.

A few days later the Met Office confirmed it was satisfied the temperature had reached 38.7C in Cambridge and the UK did indeed have a new maximum temperature record.

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But that wasn't the only new temperature record in 2019. Earlier in February the UK set a new winter temperature high with 21.2C at London's Kew Gardens and towards the end of the year the thermometer showed 18.7C at Achfary in Highland, a new UK record for December.

As you will have noticed these are all high temperature records. In fact a Met Office analysis of UK temperature data in the decade from 2010-19 shows eight high temperature records and only one low record which happened in March 2018 during the notorious 'Beast from the East'.

Image source, PA
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The Severn Bridge, March 2018

This trend, the Met Office says, is a consequence of our warming climate. In a stable climate, give or take an element of natural variability, the numbers of high and low temperature records should be roughly equal.

And this trend isn't just being seen in the UK. Last year the Associated Press poured over nearly 100 years of USA temperature data and found that since 1999 there have been two high temperature records set or broken for every one cold record.

It's clear that a warming global climate is making high temperature records more likely to occur than cold ones and this looks set to continue. The Met Office announced new research in June suggesting that the likelihood of extremely hot days in the UK will increase during the rest of this century and the chances of the UK recording a temperature above 40C for the first time are becoming increasingly likely under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

If and when that day comes it will no doubt feature heavily in the news. And we'll all be thinking about what it says about our climate and how, as science shows, it's changing.