Alice Baldan
The Met Office has confirmed that 2022 was the UK’s warmest year on record, with an average temperature of over 10°C.
Climate change has kept its spot as one of the most discussed topics in 2022, as activist groups gathered in protest of the global climate crisis and the inaction of governments worldwide.
After a year of extreme global temperatures, the Met Office has confirmed that 2022 was the warmest year in Britain, with an average of 10.03C across the 12 months. The previous record reached 9.88°C in 2014.
Met Office: A review of the UK’s climate in 2022 | @markpmcc @StottPeter Nikos Christidis @metoffice
— Carbon Brief (@CarbonBrief) January 24, 2023
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England marked the highest average temperature of the four British nations at 10.94°C, followed by Wales at 10.23°C, Northern Ireland at 9.85°C, and Scotland at 8.50°C.
Dr. Nikos Christidis, a climate attribution scientist at the Met Office, said that in a natural climate an average temperature of 10°C would only be recorded once every 500 years, while “in our current climate it could be as frequently as once every three to four years”.
Scientists at the Met Office said that such high temperatures are predicted to be caused by human activity, predominantly fossil fuel emissions. Since records began in 1884, the 10 hottest years recorded in the UK have all occurred after 2002. The UK’s coldest year ever recorded was in 1963.
Head of the Met Office National Climate Information Center, Marc McCarthy, stated that even with the influence of climate change, “we don’t expect every year to be the hottest on record from now on”.
“Natural variability of the UK climate means there will always be some variation year to year, however looking at longer-term trends, it is easy to pick out the influence climate change is having over time”.
Featured image courtesy of Gabriel McCallin via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
Alice Baldan
Alice is an aspiring environmental journalist currently based in London. She is passionate and aims to write about issues such as climate justice, animal rights, human rights, and current affairs.