It has, self-evidently, been very hot in the UK recently. So hot that we now have a new record temperature of 38.7°C, just pipping the previous all-time record of 38.5°C. As in, it was the hottest it has ever been in the UK since records have been kept, so for about 250 years. It’s also exposed how woefully unadapted our infrastructure is for a warmer future – it’s not as if anyone wanted to get on a train, right? But what’s worrying is not so much the heat itself, which is bad enough, but the lack of response to it.
Our previous maximum temperature of 38.5 degrees was set in the 2003 summer heatwave. Now, whilst we’ve exceeded that this summer, 2003 was still, in many ways, worse, given it was ridiculously hot for the best part of a fortnight[1] rather than a few days. But what’s worrying is the relative lack of media attention this year’s getting. I just about remember 2003, and the news was full of apocalyptic warnings along the lines of ‘EVERYTHING IS MELTING. REMAIN INDOORS. DRINK ALL THE WATER. IMMERSE YOUR GRANNY AND YOUR BABY IN AN ICE BATH TO SAVE THEM. THE HEAT! THE HEAT! AAAARRRGGGHHH!‘
This summer it’s been more ‘It’s a bit hot. Drink some water. Also, we might break our own temperature record. Pretty neat, huh?’
In other words, despite the well-publicised succession of scientific articles pointing out how abormally warm recent years have been, society seems to have accepted that unprecedented heat is, in fact, entirely normal. The recent succession of hotter and hotter years means we’ve forgotten what a ‘normal’ summer[2] looks like. The average maximum temperature for 1981-2010 for England, the hottest bit of the UK, in July and August is just over 20 degrees. Now, obviously, England is quite large and there’s a lot of variation, but maximum temperatures over 25 degrees in any one bit of the country are, on average, pretty unusual. Over the last few years, though, certainly in the south-east, people would probably consider them entirely reasonable. Right now, they even look to be downright cool. And that’s the really scary thing. It seems that, like the proverbial frog in a saucepan, we’ve collectively failed to notice that the heat is being turned up. Sooner or later, we’re going to boil unless we do wake up.
The ability of the human mind to normalise any set of conditions if they persist long enough is a great asset. It’s one of the key reasons we’ve successfully colonised all the planet’s biomes, rather than just giving up because it was a bit chilly or sandy or rocky. But, in this case, I rather think it’s likely to end up doing us more harm than good. Though I’m sure our wondrous new government will fix things in a jiffy. Once we leave the EU, I imagine there’s a sketchy plan to build a wall in the Channel reaching to the stratosphere to keep out all this nasty foreign air and preserve our great British weather. Or we’ll all jump in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s time machine and hide out in the relative cool of the 17th century.
The world’s not going to end overnight. But a lot more of it is going to spend a lot more time on fire. Figuratively and literally.
[1] Also, don’t forget last summer was pretty hot, if not as hot, and exceptionally dry, for the best part of 3 months.
[2] Insofar as you can define a normal state for the stochastic chaotic mess that is the Earth’s climate. Regardless, though, the 10 warmest years recorded have all happened since 2002, and none of the 10 coldest years have happened since 1963.
Aiya Helcarda 