UK Records Its Hottest and Sunniest Spring, With 43% More Sunshine Than Usual

The United Kingdom has recorded its warmest spring since records began in 1884, prompting warnings for needed action on climate change.

The season was also the sunniest on record overall for the UK, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland recording their sunniest springs, and England experiencing its second sunniest since record keeping began in 1910, according to a new Met Office report.

The UK had 653.3 hours of sunshine this spring — 43 percent above the seasonal average. It outshone the 2020 record by more than 27 hours and has been the sunniest season since 1995.

“What’s particularly notable about Spring 2025 is the combination of record warmth and sunshine, alongside very low rainfall,” said Emily Carlisle, a climate scientist with the Met Office. “This spring shows some of the changes we’re seeing in our weather patterns, with more extreme conditions, including prolonged dry, sunny weather, becoming more frequent.”

The UK has had eight of its 10 warmest springs since 2000, with the three hottest occurring since 2017, the Met Office said.

🌡️ ☀️ The UK has recorded its warmest and sunniest spring on record, according to provisional Met Office statistics. Spring 2025 is now the 4th sunniest season overall for the UK, with only 3 summers sunnier since 1910. Full details here: www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/new…

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— Met Office – weather and climate (@metoffice.bsky.social) June 2, 2025 at 9:59 AM

The mean temperature of 9.5 degrees Celsius this spring was 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than the climatological average.

The previous daytime temperature record of 14 degrees Celsius from 1893 was broken by a wide margin this spring when it reached 14.6 degrees Celsius.

Waters surrounding the UK have also been heating up, with sea surface temperatures in some areas reaching up to four degrees Celsius higher than normal, creating an unprecedented marine heat wave.

“This combination of heat and sunshine, coupled with very low rainfall, has created challenging conditions across much of the country for agriculture and water resources,” the Met Office said.

The main factor that led to the unusual spring conditions was the persistence of high-pressure systems that often originate in mainland Europe or the Azores. The systems arrived over the UK in late February and lingered until the last week of May. The effect of the systems was to block the normal flow of Atlantic weather fronts, allowing for the dominance of high pressure.

By the middle of May, the UK was having the driest spring it had seen in over a century, reported the BBC. By the end of the month, the weather turned windier and wetter, but still turned out to be the UK’s driest spring since 1974, with only a little more than half of the expected rainfall.

It looks as though June will continue the pattern, with a hotter-than-usual summer predicted for the UK, and an increased likelihood of heat waves.

The most recent Met Office three-month outlook says it is twice as likely that this year’s meteorological summer from June 1 to August 31 will be hotter than normal.

The Met Office has said the extraordinary warming is largely the result of human-caused climate change, rather than any specific weather pattern.

“The UK’s climate continues to change,” Carlisle said in the press release. “The data clearly shows that recent decades have been warmer, sunnier, and often drier than the 20th century average, although natural variation will continue to play a role in the UK’s weather.”