The latest annual report from the Met Office provides a summary of the UK weather and climate through the calendar year 2020, alongside the historical context for a number of essential climate variables. This is the seventh in a series of annual ‘State of the UK climate’ publications providing an accessible, authoritative, and up-to-date assessment of UK climate trends, variations and extremes based on the most up to date observational datasets of climate quality.

Some headline statements;

• the UK’s climate is changing with recent decades warmer, wetter and sunnier than the 20^th century
• 2020 was the was third warmest, fifth wettest and eight sunniest on record for the UK. No other year has fallen in the top-10 for all three variables for the UK.
• The UK has warmed at a broadly consistent but slightly higher rate than the observed change in global mean temperature.

Data are provided include land temperature, air and ground frost, precipitation, sea level rise, phenology and some long-term averages over recent decades. Reported significant weather include the severe and widespread flooding in February 2020 and, in early August in southern England, one of the most significant heatwaves of the last 60 years.

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