2025’s summer has beaten the previous seasonal high of 15.76C set in 2018
Summer 2025 has been confirmed as the hottest on record
The Met Office has confirmed that this summer was the UK’s warmest on record.
The mean average temperature across June, July and August was a provisional 16.10C.
This beats the previous seasonal high of 15.76C set in 2018.
It comes just months after Britain saw its warmest and sunniest spring since data began.
The back-to-back record-breaking seasons have brought long spells of dry and hot weather across the country.
But the warmer conditions have taken their toll on the environment and agriculture, leading to hosepipe bans, drought orders, poor harvests and low water levels in reservoirs.
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All five of the UK’s warmest summers have taken place since the year 2000 – 2025 (16.10C), 2018 (15.76C), 2006 (15.75C), 2003 (15.74C) and 2022 (15.71C).
Met Office temperature data for the UK began in 1884.
The UK experienced four heatwaves in 2025, all of which saw temperatures climb above 30C.
But none was quite as fierce as the heatwave of July 2022 when there was an an all-time high of 40.3C.
This year, the highest temperature recorded was 35.8C at Faversham in Kent on July 1.
Spells of intense heat in 2025 were also relatively short-lived and did not last for as long as the scorching summer of 1976 when multiple locations across England saw heatwave-like conditions lasting more than two weeks.
Temperatures peaked above 32C on 16 days during the summer of 1976, compared with nine days in 2025.
Met Office scientist Dr Emily Carlisle said: “The persistent warmth this year has been driven by a combination of factors including the domination of high-pressure systems, unusually warm seas around the UK and the dry spring soils.
“These conditions have created an environment where heat builds quickly and lingers, with both maximum and minimum temperatures considerably above average.”
The Met Office said it is the ‘persistent warmth’ of the past few months which has led to summer 2025 outranking 1976 and all others in terms of overall average temperature.
Climate change ‘continues to play a role’, with the UK warming at a rate of approximately 0.25C per decade.
The figures also indicate that an average of 212.1mm of rain fell across the UK over June, July and August – about 84 per cent of the long-term seasonal trend.
This is some way above the driest summer on record in 1995, when 105.9mm was measured.
But it follows the driest spring in the UK since 1974 and the second driest seen in England since Met Office rainfall data began in 1836.
Central, southern and eastern parts of England and Wales had an ‘especially dry’ summer, while north-western parts of the UK – particularly Scotland – were much wetter.
Dr Mark McCarthy, head of climate attribution at the Met Office, said: “Our analysis shows that the summer of 2025 has been made much more likely because of the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution.
“In a natural climate, we could expect to see a summer like 2025 with an approximate return period of around 340 years, while in the current climate we could expect to see these sorts of summers roughly one in every five years.
“Another interesting finding from our analysis is the context of this summer against other record-breaking summers, like that of 1976.
“Our analysis suggests that while 2025 has set a new record, we could plausibly experience much hotter summers in our current and near-future climate and shows how what would have been seen as extremes in the past are becoming more common in our changing climate.”
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