England's Summer Weather

England has some of the oldest weather recordings in the world. This means that when people say things like '1976 summer had X days hot in a row and so climate change isn't real' you can look at a lot of data and see what the overall trends are.

One dataset back to 1878 is the hottest each day got. This is the 'temperatures up to' figure weather forecasts give.

You can see 1976 was hot but also the trend over time. 1976 was very unusual for the 100 previous years. And now it looks fairly normal.

The English dataset goes back to 1659 for average daily temperatures. Here is how those temperatures have changed for June, July, August over that time.

June,July, August Central England average temperature since 1659

total dataset Mean: 15.3
1652-1700: 14.9
1701-1725: 15.2
1725-1750: 15.6
1751-1775: 15.3
1776-1800: 15.6
1801-1825: 15.1
1826-1850: 15.3
1851-1875: 15.3
1876-1900: 15.1
1901-1925: 14.9
1926-1950: 15.6
1951-1975: 15.3
1976-1994: 15:5
1994-2019: 16.0