LONDON — Has it ever, in human history, been this hot in the British Isles? Maybe not.
If you want to mark an unnatural, scary, real-world data point for climate change, it is here in Britain, right now, which saw its hottest day on record Tuesday, with temperatures hitting 40.2 Celsius or 104 Fahrenheit at London Heathrow. It’s an extreme-weather episode, a freak peak heat, not seen since modern record keeping began a century and a half ago.
Fires erupt around London as U.K. records hottest day ever
LONDON — The London Fire Brigade declared a major incident in response to a huge surge in fires across the capital Tuesday, as 29 sites across the country shattered the record for the highest temperature ever documented in Britain.
UK breaks record for highest temperature as Europe sizzles
LONDON (AP) — Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday amid a heat wave that has seared swaths of Europe, as the U. K.’s national weather forecaster said such highs are now a fact of life in a country ill-prepared for such extremes.
The typically temperate nation was just the latest to be walloped by unusually hot, dry weather that has triggered wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans and led to hundreds of heat-related deaths. Images of flames racing toward a French beach and Britons sweltering — even at the seaside — have driven home concerns about climate change.
The highest temperature ever officially recorded in the United Kingdom is 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 degrees Fahrenheit) on August 10, 2003 at Brogdale, a hamlet near Faversham, Kent.
This was the first time during modern weather monitoring that the UK topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and it did so at several places.
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