AFP

Britain has become warmer, wetter and sunnier this century due to climate change, an annual report by leading meteorologists said Thursday, prompting warnings of record summer temperatures in future decades.

The study — the State of the UK Climate 2020 — found that last year was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest on record in the UK.

It was the first time that a single 12-month period has registered in the top 10 for all three variables. 

The trend has already led to increasingly extreme weather, as Britain’s temperatures rise “slightly above” the global mean, the report said.

Lead author Mike Kendon, of the National Climate Information Centre (NCIC), said it was “plausible” the country could regularly hit summer temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2040, even with climate change mitigation policies.

The UK’s highest temperature ever recorded is 38.7 degrees Celsius (101.7 degrees Fahrenheit), set in July 2019.

“We’re already seeing climate impacts globally and in the UK from our changing climate and, clearly, those are set to continue,” Kendon told BBC radio.

The report revealed that 2020 was the UK’s third warmest year since records dating back to 1884, with all the top 10 hottest having occurred over the last 20 years.

The decade since 2011 has been on average 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1981–2010 average and 1.1 degrees Celsius hotter than 1961–1990.

Britain has also been on average six percent wetter over the last three decades than the preceding 30 years. 

Six of the 10 wettest years since 1862 have occurred in the last 22 years.

Professor Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society — which publishes the annual report in its International Journal of Climatology — said UK heatwaves would become “much more intense” and likely top 40 degrees Celsius. 

“It’ll start to become something that we see on a much more regular basis,” she added.

– ‘Front and centre issue’ –

Last week, flash flooding in London followed a scorching mini-heatwave, while the Met Office this month issued its first ever “extreme heat” warning. 

Similar extreme weather events have occurred around the world in recent years, including flooding in South America and Southeast Asia, record-shattering heatwaves and wildfires in Australia and the US, and devastating cyclones in Africa and South Asia.

Just this month, historic floods killed at least 180 people in Germany and at least 99 in China, while monsoon landslides and flash flooding in Bangladesh left at least 14 people dead.

John Kerry, the former US secretary of state turned climate envoy, called Thursday for more adaptation funding to make countries “more resilient”.

“Adaptation has not received the level of input and funding that it needs,” he said at a London Science Museum discussion alongside former UK leader Tony Blair.

“It’s got to become a front and centre issue for governors, mayors, prime ministers, finance ministers.”

Britain will host the crucial COP26 summit in November, when scores of countries will try to agree collective measures to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Tom Burke, chairman of environmental think-tank E3G, said the gathering would be the first of its kind where “the science of climate change has been validated by events”. 

“It’s no longer what scientists say, it’s what people are experiencing… in their own lives,” he told reporters, noting Prime Minister Boris Johnson needed to be “much more visible” diplomatically ahead of COP26.

Johnson’s spokesman said the issue was “a priority” for the British leader and that he was “proud of what this government’s doing to tackle climate change”.

As thick clouds of smoke billow across the vast Siberian region of Yakutia, Yegor Zakharov and his team are racing to stop its smouldering forests from burning even more.

Members of Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service, his team spent a recent July evening patrolling a five-kilometre (three-mile) trench they had dug at the edge of the village of Byas-Kyuel to keep an approaching wildfire at bay.

Wearing respirators against the acrid smoke, the men lit strips of rubber tyre they hung from sticks, then tapped them onto the dry forest floor on the other side of the trench to start a controlled burn.

The team has lost track of how many blazes they have tackled since late May — mostly successfully, sometimes not — as Yakutia suffers through yet another ever-worsening wildfire seasons.

“We held one property for eight days but it burned in the end because the tractors never got to us,” Zakharov said, explaining that in such cases they use shovels to dig trenches instead.

But even more than equipment, the 35-year-old brigade leader has another urgent plea: “We need more people.”

Fuelled by summer heatwaves, wildfires have swept through more than 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of Yakutia’s swampy coniferous taiga, with more than a month still to go in Siberia’s annual fire season.

Vast areas of Russia have been suffering from heatwaves and droughts driven by climate change in recent years, with numerous temperature records set.

It is the third straight year that Yakutia — Russia’s coldest region and bordering the Arctic Ocean — has seen wildfires so vicious that they have nearly overwhelmed the forest protection service. 

– Limited manpower –

The group of about 250 full-time staffers and 150 summer contract workers, who track the fires by air and drop in by parachute or on off-road trucks, is responsible for a region roughly five times the size of France.

Their goal, said Yakutia’s chief pilot observer Svyatoslav Kolesov, is to put out the fires entirely. But they also have to contend with blazes that overwhelm their manpower.

The number of firefighters in the region is far from adequate, Kolesov told AFP, recalling that when he started in 1988 the group had around 1,600 people before facing cuts over the years.

Kolesov, who monitors fires from daily flights and issues instructions to teams on the ground, said that because of limited resources the group will often keep an eye on a new blaze until it becomes sizeable. Only then will it send in a team.

“And if the fires spread quickly and soon cover a large area, then we try to save inhabited areas and strategic objects,” he said.

Environmentalists have long argued that Russia underfunds its forest fire fighting capabilities.

The country’s environment ministry is itself open about the policy, in 2015 issuing a decree that allows regions to ignore blazes if the cost of fighting fires outweighs the expected damages. 

“We’ve said for years that Russia needs to increase its budget to fight wildfires by at least three times,” Grigory Kuksin, the head of Greenpeace’s wildfire unit in the country, told AFP.

– ‘Everything would burn’ –

In early July, Russia mobilised its defence and emergencies ministries to help Yakutia battle the wildfires, while dozens of volunteers also took up the fight.

But the lack of funds for the Aerial Forest Protection Service — the only group wholly dedicated to fighting wildfires, according to Kolesov — are evident on the ground.

Brigade leader Zakharov said he asked officials repeatedly for a quad bike that never arrived so his men didn’t have to patrol their trench on foot.

“I lent most of my equipment to a team at a nearby fire,” he explained.

Later he received the all-terrain vehicle, but not before officials during a recent planning meeting disparaged the progress his team of five full-time staffers and eight summer contractors had made.

“What right do they have to criticise us?” Zakharov said, adding he had stormed out before the meeting had ended.

“Our guys have been working in the forest for a month straight. Anyone would start getting tired.” 

The brigade leader and his men were planning to fight on nonetheless. After Byas-Kyuel, they planned to move straight on to the next fire without taking a break. 

“If we weren’t around,” Zakharov said, “everything would burn.”

Britain has become warmer, wetter and sunnier this century due to climate change, an annual report by leading meteorologists said Thursday, prompting warnings of record summer temperatures in future decades.

The study — the State of the UK Climate 2020 — found that last year was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest on record in the UK.

It was the first time that a single 12-month period has registered in the top 10 for all three variables. 

The trend has already led to increasingly extreme weather, as Britain’s temperatures rise “slightly above” the global mean, the report said.

Lead author Mike Kendon, of the National Climate Information Centre (NCIC), said it was “plausible” the country could regularly hit summer temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2040, even with climate change mitigation policies.

The UK’s highest temperature ever recorded is 38.7 degrees Celsius (101.7 degrees Fahrenheit), set in July 2019.

“We’re already seeing climate impacts globally and in the UK from our changing climate and, clearly, those are set to continue,” Kendon told BBC radio.

The report revealed that 2020 was the UK’s third warmest year since records dating back to 1884, with all the top 10 hottest having occurred over the last 20 years.

The decade since 2011 has been on average 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1981–2010 average and 1.1 degrees Celsius hotter than 1961–1990.

Britain has also been on average six percent wetter over the last three decades than the preceding 30 years. 

Six of the 10 wettest years since 1862 have occurred in the last 22 years.

– ‘Intense’ –

Just last week, flash flooding in London followed a scorching mini-heatwave, while the Met Office issued its first ever “extreme heat” warning this month. 

Similar extreme weather events have been seen around the world this year.

Professor Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society — which publishes the annual report in its International Journal of Climatology — painted a grim picture of the UK’s meteorological future.

“These (heatwaves) are just going to become much more intense — we’re likely to see 40 degrees (Celsius) in the UK,” she said, adding it would “start to become something that we see on a much more regular basis.”

Britain is preparing to host the crucial COP26 UN summit in November, when scores of countries will try to agree collective measures to prevent catastrophic climate change in the coming decades.

Tom Burke, chairman of the environmental think-tank E3G, told reporters Thursday that the gathering would be the first of its kind where “the science of climate change has been validated by events”. 

“It’s no longer what scientists say, it’s what people are experiencing… in their own lives,” he said, urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to be “much more visible in the diplomacy” ahead of COP26.

Johnson’s spokesman said the issue was “a priority” for the British leader and that he was “proud of what this government’s doing to tackle climate change”.

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaskan peninsula late Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, generating small waves but no major tsunami before all warnings were canceled.

The earthquake hit 56 miles (91 kilometers) southeast of the town of Perryville, the USGS said.

The quake struck at 10:15 pm Wednesday (0615 GMT Thursday). Perryville is a small village about 500 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city.

The US government’s National Tsunami Warning Center immediately issued an alert for south Alaska and the Alaskan peninsula but canceled all warnings about three hours later.

The maximum wave height detected by the center was eight inches (21 centimeters) above tide level with small tsunamis hitting at least six points off Alaska’s coastline.

Tsunami warning sirens had been broadcast across Kodiak, an island with a population of about 6,000 people, along Alaska’s coastline. Locals living close to sea level were told to evacuate to higher ground. 

Small waves hit the coast of Kodiak, according to a broadcaster on local radio station KMXT. She said authorities had lifted evacuation orders, with no reports of any damage.

“This is the largest earthquake to happen in the Alaska region since 1965,” Michael West, state seismologist with the Alaska Earthquake Center, told Alaska Public Media. 

Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

The state was hit by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in March 1964, the strongest ever recorded in North America.

It devastated Anchorage and unleashed a tsunami that slammed the Gulf of Alaska, the US west coast, and Hawaii.

More than 250 people were killed by the quake and the tsunami.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake also caused tsunami waves in Alaska’s southern coast in October, but no casualties were reported.

Britain has become warmer, wetter and sunnier this century due to climate change, an annual report by leading meteorologists said Thursday, prompting warnings of record summer temperatures in future decades.

The study — the State of the UK Climate 2020 — found that last year was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest on record in the UK.

It was the first time that a single 12-month period has registered in the top 10 for all three variables. 

The trend has already led to increasingly extreme weather, as Britain’s temperatures rise “slightly above” the global mean, the report said.

Lead author Mike Kendon, of the National Climate Information Centre (NCIC), said it was “plausible” the country could regularly hit summer temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Farenheit) by 2040, even with climate change mitigation policies.

The UK’s highest temperature ever recorded is 38.7C, set in July 2019.

“We’re already seeing climate impacts globally and in the UK from our changing climate and, clearly, those are set to continue,” Kendon told BBC radio. 

“We’re already locked into climate change over a long period of time into the future.”

The report revealed that 2020 was the UK’s third warmest year since records dating back to 1884, with all the top 10 hottest having occurred over the last two decades.

The decade since 2011 has been on average 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1981–2010 average and 1.1 degrees hotter than 1961–1990.

Alongside rising temperatures, Britain has been on average six percent wetter over the last three decades than the preceding 30 years. 

Six of the 10 wettest years since 1862 have occurred since 1998.

Just last week, flash flooding in London and southeast England followed a scorching mini-heatwave when temperatures climbed to above 30C.

The Met Office earlier this month also issued its first ever “extreme heat” warning.

Professor Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society — which publishes the annual report in its International Journal of Climatology — painted a grim picture of extreme weather in the future.

“These (heatwaves) are just going to become much more intense — we’re likely to see 40 degrees in the UK,” she said.

“As we hit 1.5 degrees of global warming, that’s going to not just become something that we see once or twice, it’ll start to become something that we see on a much more regular basis.”

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaskan peninsula late Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, generating small waves but no major tsunami.

The earthquake hit 56 miles (91 kilometers) southeast of the town of Perryville, the USGS said.

The quake struck at 10:15 pm Wednesday (0615 GMT Thursday). Perryville is a small village about 500 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city.

The US government’s National Tsunami Warning Center immediately issued a tsunami alert for south Alaska and the Alaskan peninsula.

It initially warned of hazardous waves over the next three hours.

But after nearly three hours the maximum height detected by the center was eight inches (21 centimeters) and it downgraded the tsunami threat alerts to advisories.

Tsunami warning sirens had been broadcast across Kodiak, an island with a population of about 6,000 people, along Alaska’s coastline.

Small waves hit the coast of Kodiak, according to a broadcaster on local radio station KMXT. She said authorities had lifted evacuation orders, with no reports of any damage.

“This is the largest earthquake to happen in the Alaska region since 1965,” Michael West, state seismologist with the Alaska Earthquake Center, told Alaska Public Media. 

Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

Alaska was hit by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in March 1964, the strongest ever recorded in North America.

It devastated Anchorage and unleashed a tsunami that slammed the Gulf of Alaska, the US west coast, and Hawaii.

More than 250 people were killed by the quake and the tsunami.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake also caused tsunami waves in Alaska’s southern coast in October, but no casualties were reported.

As thick clouds of smoke billow across the vast Siberian region of Yakutia, Yegor Zakharov and his team are racing to stop its smouldering forests from burning even more.

Members of Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service, his team spent a recent July evening patrolling a five-kilometre (three-mile) trench they had dug at the edge of the village of Byas-Kyuel to keep an approaching wildfire at bay.

Wearing respirators against the acrid smoke, the men lit strips of rubber tyre they hung from sticks, then tapped them onto the dry forest floor on the other side of the trench to start a controlled burn.

The team has lost track of how many blazes they have tackled since late May — mostly successfully, sometimes not — as Yakutia suffers through yet another ever-worsening wildfire seasons.

“We held one property for eight days but it burned in the end because the tractors never got to us,” Zakharov said, explaining that in such cases they use shovels to dig trenches instead.

But even more than equipment, the 35-year-old brigade leader has another urgent plea: “We need more people.”

Fuelled by summer heatwaves, wildfires have swept through more than 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of Yakutia’s swampy coniferous taiga, with more than a month still to go in Siberia’s annual fire season.

Vast areas of Russia have been suffering from heatwaves and droughts driven by climate change in recent years, with numerous temperature records set.

It is the third straight year that Yakutia — Russia’s coldest region and bordering the Arctic Ocean — has seen wildfires so vicious that they have nearly overwhelmed the forest protection service. 

– Limited manpower –

The group of about 250 full-time staffers and 150 summer contract workers, who track the fires by air and drop in by parachute or on off-road trucks, is responsible for a region roughly five times the size of France.

Their goal, said Yakutia’s chief pilot observer Svyatoslav Kolesov, is to put out the fires entirely. But they also have to contend with blazes that overwhelm their manpower.

The number of firefighters in the region is far from adequate, Kolesov told AFP, recalling that when he started in 1988 the group had around 1,600 people before facing cuts over the years.

Kolesov, who monitors fires from daily flights and issues instructions to teams on the ground, said that because of limited resources the group will often keep an eye on a new blaze until it becomes sizeable. Only then will it send in a team.

“And if the fires spread quickly and soon cover a large area, then we try to save inhabited areas and strategic objects,” he said.

Environmentalists have long argued that Russia underfunds its forest fire fighting capabilities.

The country’s environment ministry is itself open about the policy, in 2015 issuing a decree that allows regions to ignore blazes if the cost of fighting fires outweighs the expected damages. 

“We’ve said for years that Russia needs to increase its budget to fight wildfires by at least three times,” Grigory Kuksin, the head of Greenpeace’s wildfire unit in the country, told AFP.

– ‘Everything would burn’ –

In early July, Russia mobilised its defence and emergencies ministries to help Yakutia battle the wildfires, while dozens of volunteers also took up the fight.

But the lack of funds for the Aerial Forest Protection Service — the only group wholly dedicated to fighting wildfires, according to Kolesov — are evident on the ground.

Brigade leader Zakharov said he asked officials repeatedly for a quad bike that never arrived so his men didn’t have to patrol their trench on foot.

“I lent most of my equipment to a team at a nearby fire,” he explained.

Later he received the all-terrain vehicle, but not before officials during a recent planning meeting disparaged the progress his team of five full-time staffers and eight summer contractors had made.

“What right do they have to criticise us?” Zakharov said, adding he had stormed out before the meeting had ended.

“Our guys have been working in the forest for a month straight. Anyone would start getting tired.” 

The brigade leader and his men were planning to fight on nonetheless. After Byas-Kyuel, they planned to move straight on to the next fire without taking a break. 

“If we weren’t around,” Zakharov said, “everything would burn.”

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaskan peninsula late Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, prompting a tsunami warning.

The earthquake hit 56 miles (91 kilometers) southeast of the town of Perryville, the USGS said. 

The quake struck at 10:15 pm Wednesday (0615 GMT Thursday). Perryville is a small village about 500 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city.

The US government’s National Tsunami Warning Center immediately issued a tsunami alert for south Alaska and the Alaskan peninsula.

It initially warned of hazardous waves. About two hours later it gave an update that the forecast maximum height of any tsunami would be less than one foot (30 centimeters) above tide levels.

Tsunami warning sirens were broadcast across Kodiak, an island with a population of about 6,000 people, along Alaska’s coastline.

The warning center said any potential tsunami would hit Kodiak about 11:55 pm.

That time passed without any tsunami, according to a broadcaster on local radio station KMXT.

Videos posted on social media by journalists and residents in Kodiak showed people driving away from the coast as warning sirens could be heard.

A tsunami watch was initially issued for Hawaii, meaning residents were required to stay away from beaches, but was lifted about two hours later.

Five aftershocks were recorded within 90 minutes of the earthquake, the largest with a magnitude of 6.2, according to the USGS.

Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

Alaska was hit by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in March 1964, the strongest ever recorded in North America.

It devastated Anchorage and unleashed a tsunami that slammed the Gulf of Alaska, the US west coast, and Hawaii.

More than 250 people were killed by the quake and the tsunami.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake also caused tsunami waves in Alaska’s southern coast in October, but no casualties were reported.

As thick clouds of smoke billow across the vast Siberian region of Yakutia, Yegor Zakharov and his team are racing to stop its smouldering forests from burning even more.

Members of Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service, his team spent a recent July evening patrolling a five-kilometre (three-mile) trench they had dug at the edge of the village of Byas-Kyuel to keep an approaching wildfire at bay.

Wearing respirators against the acrid smoke, the men lit strips of rubber tyre they hung from sticks, then tapped them onto the dry forest floor on the other side of the trench to start a controlled burn.

The team has lost track of how many blazes they have tackled since late May — mostly successfully, sometimes not — as Yakutia suffers through yet another ever-worsening wildfire seasons.

“We held one property for eight days but it burned in the end because the tractors never got to us,” Zakharov said, explaining that in such cases they use shovels to dig trenches instead.

But even more than equipment, the 35-year-old brigade leader has another urgent plea: “We need more people.”

Fuelled by summer heatwaves, wildfires have swept through more than 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of Yakutia’s zswampy coniferous taiga, with more than a month still to go in Siberia’s annual fire season.

Vast areas of Russia have been suffering from heatwaves and droughts driven by climate change in recent years, with numerous temperature records set.

It is the third straight year that Yakutia — Russia’s coldest region and bordering the Arctic Ocean — has seen wildfires so vicious that they have nearly overwhelmed the forest protection service. 

– Limited manpower –

The group of about 250 full-time staffers and 150 summer contract workers, who track the fires by air and drop in by parachute or on off-road trucks, is responsible for a region roughly five times the size of France.

Their goal, said Yakutia’s chief pilot observer Svyatoslav Kolesov, is to put out the fires entirely. But they also have to contend with blazes that overwhelm their manpower.

The number of firefighters in the region is far from adequate, Kolesov told AFP, recalling that when he started in 1988 the group had around 1,600 people before facing cuts over the years.

Kolesov, who monitors fires from daily flights and issues instructions to teams on the ground, said that because of limited resources the group will often keep an eye on a new blaze until it becomes sizeable. Only then will it send in a team.

“And if the fires spread quickly and soon cover a large area, then we try to save inhabited areas and strategic objects,” he said.

Environmentalists have long argued that Russia underfunds its forest fire fighting capabilities.

The country’s environment ministry is itself open about the policy, in 2015 issuing a decree that allows regions to ignore blazes if the cost of fighting fires outweighs the expected damages. 

“We’ve said for years that Russia needs to increase its budget to fight wildfires by at least three times,” Grigory Kuksin, the head of Greenpeace’s wildfire unit in the country, told AFP.

– ‘Everything would burn’ –

In early July, Russia mobilised its defence and emergencies ministries to help Yakutia battle the wildfires, while dozens of volunteers also took up the fight.

But the lack of funds for the Aerial Forest Protection Service — the only group wholly dedicated to fighting wildfires, according to Kolesov — are evident on the ground.

Brigade leader Zakharov said he asked officials repeatedly for a quad bike that never arrived so his men didn’t have to patrol their trench on foot.

“I lent most of my equipment to a team at a nearby fire,” he explained.

Later he received the all-terrain vehicle, but not before officials during a recent planning meeting disparaged the progress his team of five full-time staffers and eight summer contractors had made.

“What right do they have to criticise us?” Zakharov said, adding he had stormed out before the meeting had ended.

“Our guys have been working in the forest for a month straight. Anyone would start getting tired.” 

The brigade leader and his men were planning to fight on nonetheless. After Byas-Kyuel, they planned to move straight on to the next fire without taking a break. 

“If we weren’t around,” Zakharov said, “everything would burn.”

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaskan peninsula late Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, prompting a tsunami warning.

The earthquake hit 56 miles (91 kilometers) southeast of the town of Perryville, the USGS said. The US government issued a tsunami warning for south Alaska and the Alaskan peninsula.

“Hazardous tsunami waves for this earthquake are possible within the next three hours along some coasts,” the US Tsunami Warning System said in a statement.

Perryville is a small village about 500 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city.

Tsunami warning sirens could be heard on Kodiak, an island with a population of about 6,000 people, along Alaska’s coastline. 

The quake struck at 10:15 pm Wednesday (0615 GMT Thursday).

A broadcaster on local radio station KMXT said a tsunami, if it was generated, would hit Kodiak at 11:55 pm.

Videos posted on social media by journalists and residents in Kodiak showed people driving away from the coast as warning sirens could be heard.

A tsunami watch was also issued for Hawaii, meaning residents are required to stay away from beaches.

Five aftershocks were recorded within 90 minutes of the earthquake, the largest with a magnitude of 6.2, according to the USGS. 

Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

Alaska was hit by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in March 1964, the strongest ever recorded in North America.

It devastated Anchorage and unleashed a tsunami that slammed the Gulf of Alaska, the US west coast, and Hawaii.

More than 250 people were killed by the quake and the tsunami.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake also caused tsunami waves in Alaska’s southern coast in October, but no casualties were reported.