UK and Belgium record hottest summers

Britain and Belgium both recorded their hottest summers on record, their weather agencies announced Tuesday, after repeated heatwaves and drought conditions in parts of Europe.

The UK's Met Office said summer 2026 was provisionally the country's warmest summer on record. The UK measured an average temperature of 16.5C between June and August, above the previous record of 16.1C set in 2025.

The Met Office said the season's mean temperature was made around 130 times more likely by human-induced climate change. Amy Doherty of the Met Office said temperature records were being broken more often, reflecting the influence of human-induced climate change. Met Office meteorologist Mark McCarthy said a summer like this would be “exceptionally unlikely” in a climate unaffected by human greenhouse gas emissions.

The extreme weather left three-quarters of England and all of Wales officially in drought, with rainfall reduced to a trickle.

Belgium's Royal Meteorological Institute said temperatures at the official national reference station in Uccle, outside Brussels, averaged 20.3C. It said that was 2.4C above the mean of recent decades, an all-time record based on observations dating back to 1833, and the first time the average exceeded 20C.

Belgium had several heatwaves since June and was hit by its largest wildfire in a century in August.

Scientists warn that climate change is making extreme weather events more intense and causing heat records to fall more often. An AFP analysis of data from the European Union's Copernicus climate observatory found that 33 countries, from western Europe to the Sahel and Central America, recorded their hottest July since records began this year.

Spain registered more than 5,000 heat-related deaths from June to August, according to data from a public health institute. The UK's Health Security Agency estimated that May and June heatwaves led to 2,877 excess deaths in England, almost double the tally for the whole summer of 2025.

The Met Office said climate projections indicate that UK summers will continue to become hotter, a trend already visible in observations.