uk drought case study

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The impact of drought in England: water restrictions, fire risks and farming hardship

Experts warn of current and future impact of drought as ministers are expected to make official declaration

England is likely to be declared officially in drought on Friday, a move that will allow water companies to impose tough restrictions on water use as temperatures remain high across swathes of the UK.

Hosepipe bans are likely to follow in areas that have not yet declared them, with people being urged to save water by not washing their cars, using lawn sprinklers or filling large pools.

Ministers will take the decision after a meeting on Friday morning of the National Drought Group, which will hear from water companies, farming leaders and conservation groups.

If drought is declared, water companies will be expected to start putting their drought plans into action, and will not need further permission from ministers to impose some restrictions on water use.

With temperatures likely to reach 36C in some places over the weekend , England is experiencing its driest nine-month period since 1976. South-east England received less than 10% of its usual amount of rainfall in July, making it the driest July since 1935. Rainfall has been at about 74% of its long-term average since last November.

Scientists said it was highly unlikely that “extreme” measures of the kind used in 1976 would be needed to deal with the heatwave. Standpipes and rationing – for many, the key memories from 1976 – were still “incredibly unlikely”, according to hydrologists, even though reservoirs were at their lowest levels since current records began in 1990.

Climate experts said the drought had been predicted for some time. Mike Rivington, a senior scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, said: “The scale of heatwaves and droughts we’re currently experiencing has been projected by climate research for many years now. What we are seeing is a clear signal of what the future is going to be like.”

Nigel Arnell, a professor of climate system science at Reading University, said: “It’s incredibly unlikely that we will see major restrictions on water use in the UK. There are lots of things water companies can do before restricting a large number of users.”

He said the case of a village in Oxfordshire that ran out of water was a “one-off” and a result of “technical issues” rather than a foretaste of what the rest of England could expect.

Jamie Hannaford, the principal hydrologist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said water companies were also “more resilient than in 1976, we have better water management”.

Farmers were facing restrictions on how much water they were allowed to take from rivers and groundwater sources, threatening crop yields and raising the prospects of even higher food prices.

Jerry Knox, a professor of agricultural water management at Cranfield University, said: “We are starting to see real issues for crops such as potatoes. We will see reduced yields and particularly reduced quality.”

These problems would continue into autumn, he said, as farmers were unable to plant crops as usual and livestock farmers were already giving animals feed intended for winter because they were unable to graze in the fields.

Nature experts said they feared that some rivers were reaching “a point of no return”, as pollution and sewage outflows into rivers and streams had already vastly reduced their natural capacity to cope with drought.

There was also a high risk of wildfires across the country, as satellite images had shown extraordinary levels of dryness in vegetation and soils. Arnell said access to some vulnerable areas could be restricted to prevent people accidentally or deliberately starting fires, and firefighters had warned that the UK was “completely unprepared” for the conditions.

The Environment Agency has told water companies not to allow sewage outflows into rivers if any heavy rainfall follows the drought. Seven canals have been closed to navigation because of low water levels.

Rain and cooler weather were expected next week, but these would do little to alleviate the drought conditions, experts said.

“Lower temperatures will reduce demand for water, but the rainfall next week is likely to be showers and thunderstorms, which are hit and miss [in terms of their impact],” said Liz Bentley, the chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society and a professor of meteorology at Reading University.

Dry soils cannot absorb heavy rainfall, so any storms next week could lead to flash flooding. “We are going to need a prolonged period of steady rainfall over days if not weeks [to alleviate the drought],” said Bentley.

The Conservative party leadership candidate Rishi Sunak said in a statement: “For too long, water hasn’t had the attention that it deserves. We are living through some of the driest conditions in decades, and we need to make sure that measures to boost resilience to extreme weather conditions are part of our holistic plan for water – to protect its supply and clean it up.”

He said he would “hold water companies accountable”, would fast track approvals for water reservoirs and “explore possible incentives to encourage private investment in infrastructure which can mitigate against the impact of floods and droughts”.

England is already judged by experts to be in a state of meteorological, hydrological and agricultural drought – meaning there has been little rainfall, that water stores and soil moisture have been depleted, and farmers are being badly affected – but drought can only be officially declared by ministers, and this affects what water companies can do.

Riccardo la Torre, the national officer for the Fire Brigades Union, said lives were at stake from wildfires – scores of homes were destroyed in last month’s heatwave – and that cuts to its services in recent years were to blame for a lack of preparedness.

La Torre told Sky News: “These are brutal, brutal fires to fight: the temperature that they burn at, the speed at which they spread. The reality is we’ve been left completely unprepared to do that as a fire and rescue service.

“We’ve had over a fifth of the workforce cut since 2010 – that’s over 11,500 firefighters cut. Yet we’re asking them to deal with these extreme weather events in increasing regularity and increasing severity.”

Bentley said some of the impacts of the drought could be long term or permanent, especially if wildfires destroyed forests and peatlands. “Businesses and houses can be rebuilt, but there will be significant long-term effects on landscapes and on people’s lives.”

Rivington said that as the climate warmed these events would become more frequent and more severe. “In the future, there is a substantial risk that the recharge of water tables by winter rainfall may not be sufficient to make up for the increased summer water deficit, so if there are two successive years of drought, water shortages will be even more severe.”

• Extreme weather
• Firefighters

More on this story

2022 will be warmest year on record in UK, says Met Office

England recorded 2,800 excess deaths in over-65s during 2022 heatwaves

UK weather: more thunderstorms expected after 36,000 lightning strikes

UK weather: torrential rain batters parts of country as storm warning issued

Deaths in England’s July heatwave up 7% on rest of the month

Don’t call police over hosepipe ban breaches, Britons urged

More than half of UK lightning strikes this year have occurred since Sunday

UK weather: Devon and Cornwall hit by heavy rain and flooding

UK weather: Met Office warns of ‘dangerous’ floods across country

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• All about drought: UK drought 2010-2012 – causes and impacts

These resources combine a range of teaching approaches and embed a series of critical thinking techniques in order to further develop students’ understanding of the subject matter.

Cross-curricular links are made to literacy, numeracy and ICT enabling the students to transfer their skills across the spectrum of subjects. The lessons offer opportunities for students to conduct further research, explore the numerous websites and use a range of resources such as choropleth maps to conduct their own investigation into previous drought events and begin to predict future ones from the trends. Each lesson is accompanied by an editable PowerPoint presentation and relevant worksheets.

In this lesson, students will be engaged in storyboarding causes of the case study drought and can draw their source of information from the research on the seven catchment areas.

Learning objective

• To investigate the causes and the effects of the 2010–2012 drought in the UK.

Students will be engaged in storyboarding causes of the case study drought and can draw their source of information from the research on the seven catchment areas.

Resources to support this lesson

UK drought 2010–2012 PowerPoint presentation

Squares of Inference document

Hydrological Summary Documents:

Precipitation trends worksheet

Impacts of drought worksheet

How did the drought end? worksheet

Learning reflections worksheet

Extended learning/homework worksheet

Relevant links

Kendon, M., Marsh, T. and Parry, S. (2013) ‘The 2010–2012 drought in England and Wales’, Royal Meteorological Society (The article required for the task on slide 6 of the PowerPoint presentation) [waiting for permission and pdf from Royal Met Soc]

Marsh, T., Parry, S., Kendon, M. and Hannaford, J. (2013) The 2010-12 drought and subsequent extensive flooding. Wallingford: Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. [link to download]

The Dry Utility

About Drought Handbook: Outputs and Impacts

About Drought Event 2018 Highlights (Vimeo)

Other lessons in this set

Is drought a global phenomenon?

A case study of UK drought 2010-2012: investigating the responses

The 1976 Drought – was it all good?

The future of drought in the UK

Changing our thinking about drought

This lesson has been co-written by the GA consultant Gemma Mawdsley and produced in collaboration with the DRY research team, ENDOWS, UWE, and About Drought.

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Strategic Partners

As global temperatures rise, there is a risk drought will become more frequent in the UK. Data available here .

Winters across the UK are projected to get wetter, while summers are expected to become drier. However, it is the distribution of this rainfall that will determine future UK drought risk.

Future projections using high resolution models have suggested that during summer the number of dry days will increase, with heavier rain in between. This may mean changing how water is collected and stored to prevent adverse effects on households and agriculture.

Global Observations

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) looked at different types of drought and the likelihood of human influence on them.

There is at least medium confidence that less precipitation has been observed across significant parts of Africa and South America.

Across each continent there is evidence much of Africa, western North America, the Mediterranean and central western Europe, southern Australia, and eastern Brazil are observing more agricultural and ecological droughts. More hydrological droughts have been observed in the Mediterranean (high confidence) and Western Africa, East Asia, and Southern Australia (medium confidence).

There is still low confidence that human influence has affected trends in meteorological droughts in most regions. However, there is medium confidence human influence has contributed to the severity of certain events with more detailed studies . There is also medium confidence that human-induced climate change has contributed to increasing trends in the probability or intensity of recent agricultural and ecological droughts.

It is more difficult to separate influences for hydrological drought because water use and land changes also affect water levels.

Global Projections

The IPCC AR6 has reported that the areas affected by drought will increase in size with higher global temperatures. Even if warming is stabilised at 1.5–2.0 °C several regions are expected to experience more frequent and severe droughts.

Regions that are already suffering from a lack of rainfall are expected to further worsen. Under a high emissions scenario, regions affected by meteorological, agricultural and ecological drought could expand as far as Central America and the Caribbean, most of South America, most of Africa, the Mediterranean and central eastern Europe, and southern and eastern Australia. Only a small number of regions are expected to experience a reduction in meteorological drought.

Hydrological drought is most likely to affect regions that rely on snowmelt or are downstream of melting glaciers. However, due to large amounts of uncertainty it is difficult to predict with confidence how river flows will change.

Related pages

Attributing extreme weather to climate change

UK and Global extreme events – Cold

UK and Global extreme events – Heatwaves

UK and Global extreme events – Heavy rainfall and floods

UK and Global extreme events – Wind storms

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Great Drought of 1976: what happened and what was the impact on Britain?

In the summer of 1976, a heatwave held Britain in its shimmering, searing thrall. The land cracked, gardens withered and reservoirs lay parched and bare. We look back on the Great Drought of 1976 and the impact it had on British people, wildlife, farming and the landscape.

Matthew Oates

It is more than 40 years since the remarkable ‘long hot summer’ of 1976, when Britain briefly experienced a Mediterranean-style climate, some places ran out of water, many more nearly did, and ladybirds abounded. It was a deeply memorable if challenging experience that had a profound impact on wildlife and habitats, both positive and negative.

We have had good summers since, notably during the mid-1990s, but none with the prolonged intensity of 1976, though 1989 shadowed it. Imagine five months of spring and summer with the weather set continuously fair; such was 1976 – day after day, week after week, glorious.

Why did the great drought happen?

The roots of the great drought of 1976 run deep. A paper published in Nature that year by two Met Office scientists states that rainfall in England and Wales in the period 1971-1975 was the lowest for any five-year period since the 1850s. Also, the period from May 1975 to August 1976 was the driest since records began in 1717. The two meteorologists view all this as constituting a once-in-500-year occurrence. (The 1995 summer was marginally drier but ground water supplies were in a more robust state.)

During the winter of 1974-75, the jet stream that dictates our weather shifted to north of the Hebrides, where it stayed for much of 1975. In 1976 it moved near Iceland – about as far north as it can go. All Western Europe was affected by drought – at one point there was real concern that it would lead to economic meltdown in France.

The drought itself developed over a period of many months, for the summer of 1975 was warm, dry and sunny, particularly from late July. It led into a relatively dry autumn and a mild and rainless winter. At winter’s end, most reservoirs in England and Wales were scarcely half full, one in Northamptonshire was almost empty. The preceding 11 months had been the driest on record. Then the spring rains failed to materialise.

The dry spring of 1976

The spring of 1976 was strong, sure, unsullied and dry. The vegetation hardly grew. Consequently, celandines and then dandelions rioted along verges and in meadows, especially where the grasses had browned off during the previous summer. Their flowerings provided a long period of goldenness that foretold the glory of the summer that was to come.

Which species thrived during the heatwave?

Warmth-loving insects abounded, their populations incrementally building up as first spring and then summer blossomed. Insect-feeding birds were well supplied with food.

The main losers during this epic spring were the frogs, newts and toads, as many of their breeding pools dried up. Badgers and moles struggled to find earthworms, which had retreated deep into the dry earth. Blackbirds laboured to feed their young, and house martins had to search far and wide to find mud for nest building. Generally, though, this was a good bird breeding season, with food plentiful and no adverse weather events.

When was the drought declared in Britain in 1976?

June bumbled along pleasantly. Then, around Midsummer Day, the weather entered a new dimension, as a searing sun burnt away almost all vestige of cloud. By the start of July, water rationing became inevitable and an emergency powers bill was announced on 3 July 1976. The resultant Drought Act came into force on 6 August. Besides banning hosepipes, the Act had serious emergency powers to reduce or turn off domestic and industrial supplies.

How serious was the 1976 drought for Britain?

Fortunately, the most extreme measures were never implemented, although in south east Wales, where the Brecon reservoirs dried up, the mains water supply was switched off for up to 17 hours a day.

East Anglia, the East Midlands, South Yorkshire and Devon were also severely affected. Standpipes (outdoor taps installed on streets to dispense water) were in use in many districts, one for every 20 houses. By late August, London had 90 days’ supply left, Leeds only 80. The slogan “Save Water, Bath with a Friend” appeared everywhere, and was wondrously lampooned.

Reservoirs, lakes, ponds and wetlands dried up – even some sections of rivers, exacerbated by extraction for human use. Fish perished in their thousands, and many birds died of botulism, as disease built up in stagnant, de-oxygenated and nutrient-enriched water.

What was the impact for farmers?

Farms struggled, for many were not connected to mains water supplies and their bore holes dried out. Strawberry crops shot over in the heat, while maize, cauliflower and sprouts failed altogether. The cereal harvest was modest, especially in eastern England where the grain failed to swell. The grass stopped growing, then browned off so that farmers had to feed barley straw and hay to hungry stock, while providing thirsty animals with water became increasingly nightmarish.

In East Anglia, and locally elsewhere, fields became so arid that the topsoil blew away on stiff easterly winds. Then, to add insult to injury, the autumn became so wet that much of the potato crop had to be left in the ground.

Heath and forest fires

It was a year of spectacular pyrotechnics, for one by one our heaths and moors went up in smoke, not always by accident. Road verge and railway line fires were commonplace, caused by discarded cigarettes, at times spreading into adjacent fields. Often the smoke rose almost vertically before hitting a high level wind, bending, and drifting horizontally. From midsummer, wildfire became a national preoccupation. The news was dominated by accounts of spectacular fires, on the Surrey heaths and the North Yorkshire Moors.

All told, between April and August over half the Surrey heaths went up in smoke, the largest being a 480-hectare block of the Pirbright Commons. Some fires were allowed to run, at least up to bulldozed firebreaks, due to the lack of water. The damage on mineral soils proved to be largely superficial but long-term ecological damage occurred on peatlands where the peat ignited.

Forest fires were rife too, though these were largely confined to conifer plantations established over former heathland. Over 2,000 hectares of forest burnt up, while everywhere cohorts of newly planted trees died of drought. Many mature trees suffered from drought stress, mainly beech and silver birch. Additionally, thousands of elm trees succumbed to Dutch elm disease, as populations of the vector beetle boomed at a time when the elms were severely stressed by heat and drought.

Ladybird swarms

This was the summer of the great ladybird invasion. One observer, in Louth, Lincolnshire, recalls: “I remember seeing the greenfly and aphids drifting past the doors like green smoke. This went on for at least a couple of days. Then came the ladybirds!” They were tracking the aphids, on which ladybird adults and larvae feed. There are also accounts of light aircraft vanishing into ladybird swarms, seas covered in ladybirds, and combine harvesters jamming up with ladybirds and aphids.

The 1976 influx, which climaxed for a month from mid-July, probably engaged the British public more than any other wildlife event of modern times, for there was no avoiding the swarms. There are accounts of holidaymakers running from holiday beaches, for people had flocked to the coast, seeking cooling breezes.

The ladybirds were biting people, apparently. All the starving ladybirds were seeking, of course, was moisture and food. They were desperate.

Butterflies also abounded, their populations in orders of magnitude more numerous than what we see today. However, in places their caterpillar food plants desiccated in the heat, and populations later collapsed, notably during the miserably wet June of 1977.

The impact of the draught on urban areas

This was the summer when the London underground fulfilled its ambition to become hell-on-earth. Office culture was severely impeded, for this was before the development of efficient air conditioning systems and jackets and ties were still de rigour. At Wimbledon, where 400 spectators were treated for heat exhaustion on a single day, the stewards rebelled and removed their jackets. That privilege was also claimed by stewards at Henley Regatta.

The most remarkable casualty was Big Ben, which broke down in early August for the first and only time in its history – for three long weeks during which time stood still as the sun leered down. More predictably, trains caught fire, car radiators overheated, and miles of tarmac roads melted and remained viscous.

1976 was a year of extremes. But, most remarkable of all, no one mentioned the term climate change; it hadn’t been invented.

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https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2023/01/24/preparing-for-future-droughts/

Improving drought situation - but the work doesn't stop here

With above average rainfall in the last few months, and precautionary activity by water companies and abstractors, water levels are returning to normal across most of the country. Water storage reservoirs are rapidly refilling, and most river and groundwater levels are as expected for this time of year.

However, getting back to normal isn’t going to be like a light that you can switch on or off. The environment takes time to recover and return to where it was before the drought started.

Some areas of the country, particularly reserves in Cornwall, East Anglia and Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, are not where we’d like them to be – even with the recent heavy rainfall. Groundwater levels are improving but it takes time for rain falling today to filter through and refill underground aquifers. We are still seeing negative impacts on agriculture with limited supplies available for irrigation and, in some areas, water levels in chalk streams are still low. At the height of last summer the environmental impacts of drought were plain to see with impacts on river habitats and species; low water levels in wetland reserves; lower than normal populations of birds; wildfires; algal blooms and mortality of newly planted and mature trees. Some areas of the country are still showing signs of stress on the environment, and the Environment Agency continues to focus its ongoing efforts to monitor how well fish and invertebrates are recovering.

Are we at risk of another drought this summer?

Quite simply – yes. If we have another long period of dry weather as we did in 2022, demand for water from public drinking supplies, business and agriculture (irrigation) could outstrip supply. Wildlife could suffer from low rivers and drying wetlands.

The heavy persistent rainfall through this season has caused typical winter flooding in many areas – but even then, an acute drought could still happen this summer. It is not possible to store such a volume of water right now in case of prolonged hot weather. Across the country, there were reasonable levels of water at the start of 2022 – but by the summer usage was so high, and for so long, that reserves were not being replenished by rainfall.

How are we preparing?

In conjunction with others, we are actively planning for drought – should similar conditions return this year.

Through the National Drought Group, Government, Defra, the Environment Agency, water companies, farmers, environmental and angling groups continue to work together to balance water needs and conserve water. We are taking measures to do everything we can now to reduce the impact on water supplies to communities, including farmers and reducing impacts on the environment.

Like in 2022 we will work together to protect essential water supplies and reduce the impact of drought on the environment.

Large parts of England that are no longer in drought are in, what the Environment Agency refers to as, a “recovering state”. Our teams continue to monitor water reserves and check for environmental impacts.

Across the country, the Environment Agency is reviewing how we managed last year’s drought and how water companies managed their supplies to meet demand. This will help us all improve and strengthen our plans to be prepared should we experience the same, or more severe conditions, in the future. We need to be more agile in how we manage our water reserves and respond to drought. Together we all need to use water wisely and recognise it is a precious and limited resource.

To inform future drought planning we use rainfall and weather forecasts to run models of how well reservoirs and underground aquifers may refill under different rainfall scenarios. Weather conditions can quickly change from those that are expected, leaving us with some unavoidable uncertainty. We continue to produce monthly water situation reports, which communicate developments in groundwater levels, river flows, reservoir stocks and rainfall to our external and internal customers: Water situation reports for England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Is this the new normal with climate change? What is the Environment Agency doing to prepare the country?

We are experiencing more extreme weather more often. 2022 was the hottest summer on record for England and the driest summer since 1995. Most of England was in drought.

We rely on a variety of sources (rivers, reservoirs and groundwater) for our drinking water; in an increasingly uncertain climate the Environment Agency plays a key role in balancing the needs of water users, while ensuring there is enough to support the environment. Society’s growing needs for water, the impacts of climate change on water supplies and ensuring we protect the environment are complex challenges, all of which requires new ways of planning, evaluating and investing in water supply and demand management options.

The country needs greater resilience to drought.

In the next blog we will look at how we’re refreshing our National Framework for Water Resources and working with others to ensure our future water supply is secure.

First released in March 2020, the framework was ground-breaking in in planning for the nation’s water resources to be more resilient to climate change, droughts, and population growth, alongside a new approach to enhancing the environment. We used our best estimate of future supply shortfalls and worked with water companies and other water users to set out a framework of regional-scale planning to develop efficient solutions to the problem.

Now we need to look at new evidence, lessons identified and emerging challenges, to further improve water supply resilience across agriculture, power generation, public water supply and other sectors.

We need to ensure  collectively that we  protect the environment, ensure water is available for food production and low carbon energy production and of course, ensure water still comes out of your tap.

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Drought modelling

GAD supported a project to develop a standardised approach to estimating the poverty and nutritional impacts of droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa.

We worked with the Centre for Disaster Protection, to develop a model that simulates soil moisture in Malawi based on historic data. GAD’s model provided a methodology which can be adapted for simulating other drought measures in different countries.

Drought indicators

The Centre for Disaster Protection collaborated with the World Bank to examine various drought indicators and welfare measures.

They were looking to find a link between droughts and the impact on households, using historical weather event series as indicators of drought. GAD’s role was to develop a model to simulate the drought indicators.

Data science

GAD carried out a detailed exploration of historical data to ensure we understood the features and dynamics which we needed to capture in our modelling. We used this to develop a model which produced 10,000 simulations, over a 1-year time horizon of soil moisture at 5-kilometer points throughout Malawi.

We used data science techniques to build a model to reduce the dimensionality of the data and fit an appropriate time-series model. We then created simulated future projections of soil moisture for each of the data points.

Our analysts had to overcome the challenge of capturing the following behaviours of the underlying drought indicators:

• temporal : how to capture the seasonal trends and varying levels of soil moisture during the rainy and dry seasons
• spatial : how to incorporate correlations between spatial points (where we had to look at the relationships between 32,000 data points)
• scalability : how to make the model flexible and scalable so it can be applied to other countries and drought indicators

It is hoped that our model could be used to improve how we plan for and take action to avoid or mitigate the impact of droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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UK Drought 2012- Case Study with exam questions

Subject: Geography

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Unit of work

Last updated

10 December 2023

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An A4 sheet summarising the UK drought of 2012 required for the OCR GCSE Geography exam. Exam questions are on the back for the students to complete.

It includes:

• Areas affected and at risk of drought
• Causes of the drought
• Economic effects
• Social effects
• Environmental effects
• 3 responses to the drought
• Evaluation of these responses

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GCSE Global Hazards Case Studies

A bundle including all the case studies needed for the Global Hazards section of the GCSE OCR Exam paper. This bundle includes: * The Nepal Case Study * Typhoon Haiyan * UK Drought 2012

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Extreme Weather in the UK 2022 Heatwave Case Study

Introduction

A significant heatwave affected the UK in July 2022.

The UK recorded its hottest-ever temperature of 40.3°C in Coningsby in Lincolnshire. According to the Met Office, over 34 locations exceeded the UK’s previous temperature record of 38.7°C in 2019. Scotland recorded its hottest day with a temperature of 34.8C.

Recording breaking temperatures – Tweet from the Met Office.

What caused the heatwave in July 2022?

A high-pressure system called the Azores High, which usually sits off Spain, grew more prominent and pushed farther north, bringing high temperatures to the UK, France and the Iberian peninsula.

A high-pressure heat dome, a large mass of hot air trapped by high pressure, brought record-breaking temperatures to Europe and the UK.

A heat dome – Source BBC.

How is the heat wave linked to climate change?

The Met Office estimates climate change made the heatwave ten times more likely. The overwhelming majority of scientists agree greenhouse gases – which trap the sun’s heat – are causing a rise in global temperatures and climate change. Moreover, human activity has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect by releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Periods of intense heat occur within natural weather patterns. However, they are becoming more frequent worldwide, are more intense, and last longer due to climate change.

As heatwaves worldwide hit record temperatures, this NASA graphic reveals how the world has warmed since 1880.

What were the impacts of the 2022 heatwave?

During the heatwave, five people died in separate incidents involving water. Four were teenage boys, and a fifth was a man aged 20.

On Tuesday, 19th July 2022, the London Fire Brigade declared a major incident after several fires broke out in and around the capital. As a result, London firefighters experienced their busiest day since the Second World War. The fire service usually expected 500 calls on a busy day but received more than 2,600 calls on Tuesday when more than a dozen fires raged simultaneously. Forty-one properties in London were damaged by fire.

More than 250 firefighters tackled three grass fires in London. About 175 firefighters are on Pea Lane in Upminster, east London, with smoke billowing over the M25 motorway.

A major blaze in the village of Wennington in east London ripped through fields and homes. Around 100 firefighters worked to bring the fire under control.

Wennington Fire – Source BBC

Hertfordshire and Leicestershire fire services also declared major incidents.

South Yorkshire Police declared a major incident due to the demand for services from fires across the county. Fires caused devastation in Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham. Firefighters with South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue spent the day battling wildfires in fields that destroyed people’s homes. Six houses were destroyed in Barnsley.

Network Rail said train travellers were around 40% lower than the previous week, with many services disrupted by the heat. The northeast mainline was closed for the day on 19th July 2022. In addition, a line-side fire near the London Euston-Milton Keynes railway caused all services on the line to be suspended. The blaze was caused when overhead electric cables came down in Harrow in north London, which Network Rail attributed to the extreme temperatures.

Rail services between Manchester Piccadilly and Sheffield were also suspended due to the extreme heat.

Thousands of people were without power after “extreme” temperatures caused equipment to overheat. Almost 8,000 properties in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the North East were without electricity, with some believed to have been off since Monday 18th July. Northern Powergrid’s live power cut map showed almost 15,000 homes were without electricity on Tuesday, 19th July.

Some hospitals in England were forced to cancel surgeries because operating theatres were too hot .

Flights at Luton airport were stopped after heat caused surface defects on the runway. In addition, the RAF cancelled flights from Brize Norton with reports that the heat affected the runway.

Aysgarth Falls and Riverbed, a popular waterfall attraction in the Yorkshire Dales, ran dry due to the heatwave and low rainfall.

What were the responses to the 2022 heatwave?

The Met Office issued the first-ever Red warning for exceptional heat .

Gritters were deployed to protect roads from melting in the heat .

Hammersmith Bridge in London was wrapped in giant pieces of foil to stop it from overheating .

Railways’ speed was reduced due to the risk of rails buckling in the heat .

The East Coast mainline was closed to trains.

A major incident was declared in London by the fire service.

Further Reading

Live report from the BBC on 19th July 2022

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