Sea levels are increasing around Britain at a far faster rate than a century ago while the country is warming slightly more than the global average, leading meteorologists said. The annual study — the State of the UK Climate 2021 — found recent decades have been “warmer, wetter and sunnier” than the 20th century.

The State of the Climate report also says that higher temperatures are the new normal for Britain. The report highlights again the ways climate change is affecting the UK. The Met Office assessed climate and weather events for 2021 including extreme events like Storm Arwen that caused destructive flooding. The report also says that while the UK climate in 2021 was “unremarkable” by modern standards, it would have been exceptional 30 years ago. That is because climate change is altering the planet, making hotter temperatures the norm.

“This year’s report continues to show the impact of global temperature rises on the climate in the UK,” the Met Office, the country’s meteorological authority, said in a summary. It added the findings were “reaffirming that climate change is not just a problem for the future and that it is already influencing the conditions we experience here at home”.

Meteorologists noted in the report that sea levels over the last three decades had increased in some places at more than double the rate recorded at the start of the 1900s. They have risen by around 16.5 cms (6.5 inches) since 1990 — approximately three to 5.2mm each year, compared to 1.5 mm annually in the early part of last century.

This is exposing more areas of coastal land to larger and more frequent storm surges and “wind driven wave impacts”, the Met Office said.

Svetlana Jevrejeva, of the National Oceanographic Centre, said there was evidence that the rises were due to the increased rate of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Glacier melting around the world and warming of the ocean were also responsible, she noted. “As sea levels rise there can be greater impacts from storm surges,” Jevrejeva warned.

The Met Office’s Mike Kendon, lead author of the report, said record temperatures, such as last week’s unprecedented heatwave, were “becoming routine rather than the exception”. “It is telling that whereas we consider 2021 as near-average for temperature in the context of the current climate, had this occurred just over three decades ago it would have been one of the UK’s warmest years on record,” he added.

The story was covered in the BBC and France24, amongst others. The Met Office release can be read here and the full report can be found here.