Climate Change: is the UK ready for the rising temperatures?

With the UK experiencing uncomfortably high temperatures and heatwaves, climate change is undeniable, and something we are feeling more and more in our everyday lives. In the past, mitigation has been the focus, in order to limit climate change and its effects. However, adaptation has become increasingly recognised as necessary. Climate change adaptation refers to the actions required to manage the effects of unavoidable expected climate change. 

Sadly, we have reached a point where even if global targets to limit global warming are reached, there will still be global changes due to unavoidable temperature rise. This has arguably already begun and will require adaptation. 

In May, just as the wave of heatwaves in the UK began, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) published their report on climate adaptation. The CCC was established as part of the Climate Change Act 2008 and are responsible for advising the UK on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, prepare for, and adapt to the impacts of climate change. 

It has been 20 years since the Climate Change Act was passed which requires the UK to address the risks of climate change. As part of this, the CCC must assess the risks every 5 years and produce an adaptation action plan, with the previous one released in 2023. This most recent report, titled ‘A Well-Adapted UK – the Fourth Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk’, outlined how the CCC feel the UK is underprepared for the predicted, and near-certain, 2 degree rise in mean temperatures by 2050. This is by far their strongest communication yet, highlighting the significance of climate change adaptation as an issue.  

With the recent local heatwaves bringing temperatures reaching over 37 degrees, schools were closed, hospital appointments cancelled and the Met Office urged for essential travel only. Even now, we are already experiencing disruption and damage from the rapidly increasing rise in temperature. In the future, temperatures are predicted to push to 40°C and 45°C more often with national and global risks mounting as the temperatures do. 

As the CCC concluded in their report, what governments have been doing on adaptation clearly isn’t working. Climate risks are accelerating, and the consequences are becoming more obvious with every additional news story about extreme weather events. The heatwaves we have been experiencing in the UK recently are just a glimpse of this.  

It is important to recognise that adaptation shouldn’t be seen as a replacement solution for reducing climate change. Mitigation remains essential to limit emissions and other factors and prevent the most severe impacts. However, climate change is already unavoidable, meaning adaptation must happen alongside mitigation efforts. Preparing for the impacts we can no longer avoid should not be seen as accepting climate change as inevitable and giving up, but instead as a necessary step to protect the people and places most at risk. The challenge now is ensuring that adaptation receives the attention and investment needed to build a UK that is resilient to the changing climate.