Miliband says UK's way of life ‘under threat' amid extremes of heat and rainfall

Leader Live

a day ago

The latest state of the UK climate report, published in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, shows the impact of human-caused global warming on the UK's weather, seas, people and wildlife.
From earlier spring events in nature to record warm periods in 2024, which have already been beaten again this year, Met Office experts say the UK's climate is 'notably different' from just a few decades ago.
The report details the climate in 2024, and over the longer term, highlighting how the UK has warmed at a rate of about 0.25C a decade and is now about 1.24C warmer than from 1961 to 1990.
For the first time, the report also found UK sea levels to be rising faster than the global average.
The Energy Secretary called the findings 'a stark warning' to take action on climate and nature.
'Our British way of life is under threat,' Mr Miliband told the PA news agency.
'Whether it is extreme heat, droughts, flooding, we can see it actually with our own eyes, that it's already happening, and we need to act.
'That's why the Government has a central mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower and tackle the climate crisis.'
On those who oppose Labour's green policies, he said: '(U)nless, we act on the cause of what is happening, the cause of what is changing our climate, then we will be betraying future generations.'
He spoke during a visit to a project restoring a rare alkaline fen at Hinksey Heights, Oxfordshire, with Environment Secretary Steve Reed, ahead of the report's release.
Conservationists told the ministers how the fen, which is part of a national effort to expand the country's best freshwater habitats, was helping to boost wetland biodiversity and sequester planet-heating carbon in the atmosphere.
Responding to the report, Mr Reed told PA it 'lays absolutely bare the damaging impact of climate change on people living in this country'.
But he said that through projects like the fen, 'we're tackling the problem of nature loss and also we're tackling the problem of climate change at the same time'.
One year in, Labour has been fiercely criticised over its approach to the environment, including concerns around planning reforms sidelining nature in pursuit of growth.
The Environment Secretary defended the Government's actions, pointing to boosting funding for sustainable farming and developing the nature restoration fund so that money from house builders goes towards more impactful landscape-scale projects.
'We'd become one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth,' he said. 'This Government is calling time on that decline.'
Elsewhere, the report said that the last three years have been in the top five warmest on record for the UK.
Last year was the fourth warmest in records dating back to 1884, while the year had the warmest May and warmest spring on record – already beaten by 2025's record hot spring.
But Mike Kendon, Met Office climate scientist and lead author of the report, said: 'It's the extremes of temperature and rainfall that is changing the most, and that's of profound concern, and that's going to continue in the future.'
The hottest summer days have warmed about twice as much as average summer days have in the past decade in some parts of the UK, according to new analysis in the report.
And as the UK's climate warms, it is also getting wetter, with extremes of rainfall, floods and storms in 2024, as in recent years.
England and Wales had the wettest winter from October 2023 to March 2024 on record in more than 250 years, as floods hit Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, the West Midlands and eastern Scotland.
But while red warnings were issued for storm Isha in January and storm Darragh in December, observations do not currently suggest the UK is becoming stormier or windier.
Overall, however, the country's weather is changing because of rising greenhouse gases pushing up global temperature, Mr Kendon said, with records being broken 'very frequently'.
'Every year that goes by is another upward step on the warming trajectory our climate is on,' he said.
'Observations show that our climate in the UK is now notably different to what it was just a few decades ago.'
The report also said tide gauge records since the 1900s show sea level rise around the UK is speeding up, with two-thirds of the rise of that time taking place in just the last three decades.
Dr Svetlana Jevrejeva, from the National Oceanography Centre, said the UK's coasts would start to see more events where rising sea levels combined with high tides would lead to coastal inundation, even without storms.
'This extra sea level rise contribution is leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme sea levels and an intensification of coastal hazards,' she said.
To highlight the impact of the UK's warming climate on wildlife, the report drew on Nature's Calendar, a volunteer-fed database of the natural signs of the changing seasons managed by the Woodland Trust.
Records for 2024 show that spring was earlier than average for 12 of the 13 spring events monitored, and the earliest in the data running back to 1999 for frogspawn appearing and blackbirds nesting.
The period of the year in which leaves were on trees from spring to autumn was also longer than average, mostly because of the earlier spring in 2024.
Chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, Professor Liz Bentley, said the report reinforced the 'clear and urgent signals of our changing climate'.