Limit global warming to 1.5 ° C: this was the objective set by the Paris climate agreement negotiated in 2015 by 197 countries.
It is, according to many scientists, currently out of reach.
The British presidency of COP26, scheduled for November in Glasgow, however hopes to keep this objective "alive".
On the occasion of the publication of the UK climate report for the year 2020 on Thursday, Royal Meteorological Society Chief Executive Officer Liz Bentley pointed out that the planet is already experiencing extreme heat resulting from a warming of 1, 1 to 1.2 ° C.
"If we add another 0.3 ° C", these heat waves "are going to become more and more intense - we will probably see 40 ° C in the UK although we have never experienced this kind of temperature", he said. she declared.
The highest temperature on record in the UK is 38.7 ° C, a record high reached on July 25, 2019 in Cambridge.
“By reaching 1.5 ° C of global warming, it will not only be something that we will see once or twice,” but “something that we will see on a regular basis,” she added.
The effects of global warming already visible
Mike Kendon, the author of the report, judged on the BBC that 40 ° C in summer in the UK is "plausible", pointing out that global warming is already manifesting in the UK as in the rest of the world.
According to the report, the year 2020 is the third warmest, the fifth wettest, the eighth sunniest and the first to pass in the top 10 of these three criteria.
The average winter temperature was 5.3 ° C, 1.6 ° C higher than the average observed between 1981 and 2010.
Read alsoWeather: in the United Kingdom and in Finistère, an unusual heat wave
With 34 ° C reached six days in a row at the beginning of August 2020, the south of England has hit one of the biggest heat waves of the last 60 years. According to Mike Kendon, 34 ° C has been exceeded seven of the last ten years in the UK, compared to seven of the last fifty years previously.