The United Kingdom, a region known for its gray skies and damp weather, is seeing a real shift in its weather conditions. In 2025, our English neighbors didn’t need to vacation in the south of France to find the sun.
Two records were in fact broken in 2025: it was the warmest and the sunniest year in the United Kingdom since weather records began (1884), ahead of 2022 and 2023, the Met Office, the country’s national weather service, has just announced. The UK’s average temperature for 2025 was 10.09°C. It is the second year in which the annual average temperatures have crossed the symbolic 10°C threshold. ‘This increasingly clearly illustrates the impact of climate change on temperatures in the United Kingdom. A rapid attribution study carried out by the Met Office supports this finding: it shows that human-caused climate change increased by 260 the likelihood that the United Kingdom would reach the 2025 annual temperature record,’ the Met Office report says.
Temperature trends in the United Kingdom from 1884 to 2025. © Crown, Met Office
More and more sunshine each year in the United Kingdom
Alongside unusually high temperatures, the sun shone more than ever in 2025: it was the sunniest year since sunshine records began in 1910, with an average of 1,648.5 hours of sunshine across the country, or 61.4 hours more than the previous record set in 2003. As a result, the year was also marked by a rainfall deficit: spring 2025 was the driest since 1974, which ‘put severe pressure on public water supply networks, with many reservoirs reaching alarming levels and nearly 10 million people left without water.’
Was this unusually sunny and dry weather also caused by global warming? The answer is not as obvious as it is for temperatures: ‘it could simply be natural variability, although the reduction of aerosols [pollutants, editor’s note] could also play a role. Current climate projections show no conclusive evidence of a future change in sunshine linked to climate change,’ the Met Office explains. Even if the reason is still unclear, the UK’s skies are changing: sunlight has been increasing almost every year across the country since 1980, and the records keep stacking up.
Karine Durand
Specialist for extreme weather and environment
A specialist in extreme weather phenomena and environmental issues, this journalist and TV host has been explaining climate topics since 2009. With over 15 years of experience in both French and American media, she is also an international speaker.
Trained in communication and environmental sciences, primarily in the United States, she shares her passion for vast natural landscapes and the impacts of climate change through her work on biodiversity and land management.