Forecasters say 2025 ‘more likely than not’ to be UK’s hottest year on record

Met Office says temperatures are tracking ahead of 2022 after year of heatwaves and drought, though late cold spell could yet intervene

Forecasters say 2025 is “more likely than not” to break the record for the hottest year in the UK since records began, after a summer of heatwaves and drought followed by a mild autumn.

According to the Met Office, the official forecaster, the mean temperature for 2025 is tracking well ahead of the previous highest year, set in 2022. However, a colder spell expected from Christmas until the new year makes it too close to call definitively.

It will almost certainly become one of the UK’s warmest years on record, joining 2022 and 2023 in the top three.

“This should come as no surprise,” said Mike Kendon, a senior scientist in the Met Office’s climate information team. Over the last four decades the UK’s annual temperature has risen by about 1C.

“We will have to wait for the year-end before confirming 2025’s final number but at this stage it looks more likely than not that 2025 will be confirmed as the warmest year on record for the UK.

“However, it will not be long until this record is broken again. Since the start of the 21st century a new record has been set for the UK’s annual mean temperature no less than six times – in 2002, 2003, 2006, 2014, 2022 and now 2025 [if confirmed] – each record progressively warmer than the last.”

If confirmed, 2025 would be only the second year in observational records in which the UK’s annual mean temperature has exceeded 10C.

It would also mean that four of the past five years feature among the top five warmest since 1884, with all of the top 10 occurring in the past two decades.

Earlier this year, the Met Office said the UK had its hottest summer on record, after four heatwaves pushed the mean temperature across June, July and August to 16.1C. All five of the hottest summers on record have occurred since 2000.

“In terms of our climate, we are living in extraordinary times,” Kendon said. “The changes we are seeing are unprecedented in observational records back to the 19th century.”

Cover photo:  The Trough of Bowland in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire. Unseasonably warm autumn weather has contributed to a potentially record-breaking year for the UK temperatures. Photograph: Maureen Bracewell/Getty Images/500px