State of the UK Climate in 2025

This report provides a summary of the state of the UK's climate in 2025. It is one of a series of annual reports published in the International Journal of Climatology since 2018. It presents the latest assessment of UK climate trends, variations and extremes based on the most up to date observations from the land network of weather stations. These observations are placed into context using long-running climate series extending back to the 19th Century. The observations represent ‘ground truth’, telling us what has already happened to our climate.

The outstanding feature of the weather of June was its abnormal dryness. … The fall for the month amounted to less than 6% of the average over the whole of England and Wales if parts of the extreme north and eastern counties from the Wash to Beachy Head were excepted. … In many districts in the south and south-west of England and in the south of Wales the month was rainless.

An example of an exceptionally dry month 100 years ago: extract of text for June 1925 from the Met Office Monthly Weather report (Met Office 1926). In the current version of the HadUK-Grid dataset, England and Wales combined recorded 4.1 mm, 6% of the 1991–2020 June average, and this is the driest June for the UK in the series from 1836 to 2025.