Scientists at Lancaster University’s Hazelrigg weather station have recorded the highest ever June temperature recorded since records began at the site.
On Thursday (June 25), the weather station, located on a hill close to Lancaster University’s Bailrigg campus, recorded 30.3°C, exceeding the previous June record of 30.1°C which was set just three years ago.
That night (Thursday into Friday) was by far the warmest on record in June, with a minimum of 21.6°C – one of only six so-called “tropical nights” (above 20 degrees) recorded at the site, and the second warmest night of any month in 60 years of records.
Four of those six ‘tropical nights’ have happened since 2022, the only two other occasions being July 1975 and August 1990.
It’s 50 years since the start of the famous 1976 heatwave – and while that lasted longer, with nine consecutive days exceeding 28°C at Hazelrigg, the temperatures that year were never quite as high as experienced this week.
The highest temperature recorded at Hazelrigg in June 1976 was 28.3°C, while the highest for that whole summer was 30.0°C. That is now only the eighth hottest day recorded at Hazelrigg, (though still one of only eight exceeding 30°C).
The records show that there were three 30°C days in the first five decades of measurements (or a once in 17-year event); but five days exceeding 30°C within the last eight summers.
Dr James Heath, from the Lancaster Environment Centre and part of the team that takes daily weather readings at Hazelrigg, said the more frequent extreme hot temperatures reflects the fact that while the average temperatures continue to rise, this pushes up the likelihood of experiencing the highest extremes massively.
He said: “The average temperature here has increased by around 0.25°C per decade, in line with the global trend. That might not sound much, but that average is of a distribution of individual days, ranging from unusually cool to exceptionally hot, with most days clustered around the centre.
“Shifting that mid-point upwards even slightly has a relatively much larger impact on the (initially small) number of extremely hot days. For example, taking into account the hottest 0.1% of summer days recorded here over 60 years, that threshold is now nearly four times more frequently exceeded than just 10 years ago.”
Hazelrigg is a UK Met Office climatological station where daily measurements of temperature, rainfall and sunshine etc have been taken there since 1976, with a further 10 years of data collected before that on the university’s Bailrigg campus.
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