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As Europe warms twice as fast as any other continent, heat risks in the UK are intensifying at an alarming rate. More than 40,000 heat-related deaths have occurred between 1988-2025 in what has been described as a “national scandal”. The summer of 2026 – with more than five heatwaves, an unprecedented ‘firewave’, and an ‘exceptionally serious’ drought – saw close to 3,000 heat-related deaths in May and June alone.
In this context, heat has become the most commonly reported climate impact in the UK. This topic thread highlights how it is now making Britons more fearful of the future, parents scared for their children’s safety, and is disrupting the nation’s health, sleep and work.
Heat risks aren’t felt equally. The data increasingly reveals how heat, drought and fires are experienced differently due to politics, region, income and ethnicity. And at the local level people are facing up to heat, drought and fires in different ways: from Welsh farmers embracing nature-friendly approaches, to Birmingham schools and restaurants adapting to the heat.
But despite community actions, the nation has repeatedly warned that we are not prepared. This widespread sentiment underpins why people want climate risks to be taken much more seriously – with urgent action to build resilience seen as a ‘top priority’.
In practice, this translates into support for maximum working temperatures, more greenspace, better regulations, and solid plans put in place for when heat, drought and fires hit. With the affordability of many measures remaining front and centre – rather than the burden falling to those worst affected, the public will be looking to the government and the worst polluters to step up.
This thread was co-developed with input from the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), Local Storytelling Exchange, Dr Mehri Khosravi (University of East London), Shade the UK, Round Our Way and Climate Outreach,
A new study has examined how people in England receive, understand and respond to Heat-Health Alerts – showing that there are clear perceptual and behavioural gaps along the pathway from ‘alert’ to ‘action’.
The researchers carried out a nationally representative online survey in August 2025, finding that not all UK heat experiences are equal, and that heat health alerts do not straightforwardly lead to behavioural changes:
Looking deeper into how people’s beliefs influenced responses, the researchers found that protective behaviour was associated with a sense of the heatwave severity, the possible benefits of acting, perceived barriers in the way, and people’s confidence in carrying out actions (self-efficacy). Inaction was associated with low perceived personal risk, uncertainty about what actions to take, and difficulties understanding or responding to warnings.
This work builds on other recent study that shows a range of ‘perception gaps‘ exist in the context of UK extreme heat.
Polling by IPPR and Persuasion UK has highlighted high levels of net support for heat and flood adaptation policies in the UK. The policies receiving the highest net support were:
The poll also found that 81% of people feel the UK is unprepared for the worst impacts of climate change, although 59% of people think it’s not yet too late to avoid the worst impacts.
When it comes to climate adaptation vs. reducing emissions, just 5% of people say they would prioritise adaptation alone.
This builds on previous polling by Climate Barometer showing that the majority of people feel the UK is not well prepared for climate impacts, and most feel climate adaptation is equally important alongside the shift to clean energy.
The Islington Business Climate Resilience Toolkit helps businesses of all sizes take practical steps toward building resilience against a changing climate. The aim is to help businesses, from high-street retailers to co-working architectural practices, find relevant climate resilience guidance.
Covering a range of climate risks – including overheating, drought and flooding – it offers a simple way to assess exposure to climate risks (see image for example), prioritise actions, find sector-specific advice, and access practical measures that can be implemented.
Through practical advice, checklists and more – it supports businesses to decarbonise by reducing reliance on fossil fuels, adapt to a changing climate, and work with communities to build collective resilience and long-term sustainability.
Following months of sweltering heatwaves, record-breaking wildfires and five regions in drought, this week it was provisionally confirmed that 2025 was the UK’s hottest summer on record.
While this new record was made ‘70 times’ more likely by climate change, the overwhelming sentiment is that the country is not prepared for more summers like this. The UK’s official climate advisors, practitioners who work on the frontline of the heatwave response, and the British public all agree that the UK isn’t ready for more extreme weather,worsening heat, and compounding risks like water scarcity and wildfires.
At the same time, there are important perception gaps to address. Despite the alarming statistics about heat-related deaths in the UK, many people were looking forward to the first heatwaves this summer. Lots think that heatwaves will only become a problem for the UK in the future. And many believe that hot weather poses more of a risk to other people, not themselves.
In this context there are important conversations now happening about how to grapple with the growing climate risks in the UK, including the sudden lurch towards air conditioning (despite its potential to make heat risks worse).
For more on the key issues surrounding heat communication, check out our recent opinion piece in Climate Home News.
As the UK’s third summer heatwave drew to a close, Ed Miliband used his first annual climate statement to Parliament to warn of the growing impacts of climate breakdown in the UK, backed by the Met Office’s latest State of the UK Climate report.
The report shows how extreme weather is now the norm in the UK, with data from hundreds of weather stations revealing that the hottest days are becoming more frequent and severe, and intense rainfall has increased.
In this opinion piece for Climate Home News, Climate Barometer’s Niall McLoughlin highlights the urgent need for better communication around extreme heat.
Despite improvements to heat warnings, a disjointed landscape of heat communications means that many people feel the UK is poorly prepared for heat risks. Niall’s piece calls for improvements such as using social research to better tailor communication, focusing more on longer-term heat preparedness, and closing perception gaps which may lead people to underestimate risks.
He points also to locally-led tree planting projects as an example of the kind of long-term, community-based preparation needed. Research from Cardiff University has shown that such efforts must be accelerated significantly to help cities adapt to intensifying heatwaves. Their new findings reveal that urban tree planting can cut city temperatures by up to 5°C, making it one of the most effective tools for cooling overheated streets.
Two polls from YouGov show how positivity towards heatwaves shifts in response to heat episodes.
In the first poll, conducted on 18th June 2025, 41% said they were “hoping a heatwave “does happen” over the next few weeks, while 47% said they were “hoping it does not happen”
But just a few weeks later, after a second heatwave amist the UK’s warmest summer on record – these views changed.
On the 7th of July – in a repeat poll – just 37% said they were hoping a heatwave “does happen” over the next few weeks, while more than half overall (52%) said they were now “hoping it does not happen”.
Some of the clearest shifts in those “hoping it does not happen” occurred amongst Conservative supporters (+9%), the over 65s (+8%), and Londoners (+8%).
Climate change has doubled the number of ‘pregnancy heat-risk days’ in the UK, according to research by Climate Central and Round Our Way.
Extreme heat, driven by climate change, poses an escalating threat to pregnancy and maternal health around the world and in the UK. Heat poses a number of serious risks to both mothers and newborns before, during and after pregnancy.
The analysis shows that between 2020-2024 there was an average of 26 pregnancy heat-risk days in the UK each year. That means days hotter than 95% of all temperatures observed at a given location (compared against the 1991-2020 period).
Speaking on this issue – one mother, Amy Woolfson, who gave birth to her baby girl in London during amidst dangerous heat in September 2023, said:
“The thermometer that I had brought from home was recording 26.2°C by my bed at 4.28am. When the sun rose that morning, there was intense sunshine, with the windows on my side of the ward facing into the sun.
“Around 10am I took my newborn down to the ward lounge leaving a note on my bed saying I was trying to find somewhere to cool down. I said come and find me in the lounge and that I wanted to go home. I was very distressed.
“But by 12.45 the temperature had exceeded 29°C in the lounge and was 30.6°C by my bed at 1.35pm. This is completely at odds with official advice, including on hospital leaflets, that a safe sleeping temperature for babies is 16-20°C.
“I do not believe that my safety concerns were taken seriously.”
This story follows others by Round Our Way revealing how maternity wards are increasingly at risk from climate extremes, such as heat and floods.
A research paper – based on a nationally representative survey of 1750 UK residents in summer 2023 – finds several gaps and contradictions in heat perceptions. This includes:
A survey of 1,500 UK households carried out in 2023 has found that 19% of households reported using AC, compared with figures of around 3% in 2011 and approximately 5% of UK homes in 2018 reported in other sources. This suggests a substantial shift in domestic cooling practices over the past decade.
The timing of AC purchases was particularly interesting: 81% of AC users reported purchasing their AC between 2022 and 2023, while only 19% had purchased it before 2022. This suggests that the experience of recent extreme heat (such as the record breaking 40C heatwave of 2022) and overheating may be contributing to a rapid increase in demand for domestic cooling.
The findings point to a changing UK debate around domestic cooling, with households increasingly turning to mechanical cooling as they experience more frequent and severe heat. The authors note that:
“If summer warming trends continue, our survey suggests, AC adoption is likely to increase, placing both a significant burden on electricity grid peak demand, and leading to economic inequalities, particularly among lower socioeconomic groups.”
Research into people’s experiences during the record breaking 2022 heatwave has found that impacts are shaped by social and structural factors. This briefing by CAST, which involved 40 interviews across the South West and SE England found mixed narratives and responses to the heat.
Although the heat was seen as positive by some initially, many interviewees quickly struggled with the high temperatures, responding reactively rather than proactively to heat.
On the back of the interviews, CAST recommend that:
In the face of rising climate impacts, UK-based researchers are calling for more measures that simultaneously tackle the root causes of climate change, while enabling society to adapt.
Efforts to tackle climate change have tended to prioritise mitigation (reducing emissions) over adaptation efforts (reducing vulnerabilities), and these two broad types of measures are often split across government departments, such as Defra and DESNZ in the UK.
But new research, using the UK’s record-breaking 40C heatwave in 2022 as a case study, has found clear demands for national and local governments to roll out measures that combine mitigation and adaptation.
Policy-makers, climate organisations, and those working in emergency response felt that approaches – such as creating climate-resilient neighbourhoods, tree-planting and other nature-based solutions – should be a priority, given their dual benefits. They felt efforts to combine emissions reductions and adaptation have challenges, but were feasible, with better coordination.
The new analysis also suggests that framing these efforts as part of working towards a ‘climate resilient net zero’ can be a useful way of engaging a range of relevant audiences and decision-makers – building on existing support for net zero.
The study findings are supported by Climate Barometer tracker insights, which shows that both the public and MPs feel mitigation and adaptation are equally important. It also echoes previous work which found that the public view mitigation and adaptation as “two sides of the same coin”.
Our CAST briefing paper co-authored with Dr Charles Ogunbode re-analyses and reviews key insights from the pivotal Spotlight report, as well as CAST climate views survey data.
We found that people of colour in the UK are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts. Compared to white respondents, people of colour in the UK were more likely to say they have experienced climate impacts – including heatwaves, water shortages, and wildfires – personally.
They were also more likely to be concerned about climate change and see it as a serious, urgent threat. And while people of colour experience higher climate anxiety levels compared to white respondents, they also reported feeling greater efficacy and hope and expressed greater levels of support for several climate change policies.
The current evidence base, including the one outlined in the briefing paper, is very limited. Sample sizes don’t allow, for example, robust comparisons to be made between different minority ethnic and racial groups, and this limits their application in campaign and engagement strategies. There is a need a more dedicated focus on the climate views and experiences of people of colour in the UK, with insights budgets that permit truly inclusive samples, prioritisation of projects that paint a more nuanced and richer picture of public opinion on climate change.
Research on the UK’s response to the record breaking 2022 summer heatwaves has found that decision- makers, first responders and community feel England is “not prepared” to manage future extreme heat events – particularly if these were to occur more frequently.
Reflecting on the 2022 heatwave response across England as a whole, as well as specific regions (London, Manchester and Yorkshire and Humber), research participants expressed concerns about a lack of preparedness for the heat, a lack of specific resources and funding, as well as the need for better communication, public engagement and education.
In a related policy note, the authors highlight that:
“The heatwave season of 2022 serves as a warning that England and the rest of the UK are not ready to respond adequately to such extreme heat events. Yet events like this are likely to become more common and severe, thus preparedness needs to be improved to reduce avoidable deaths, minimise the economic impacts of future heatwaves, and shield the most vulnerable from the worst of the effects.”
