Britain may have experienced a frequently cool summer, but the past three months have globally been the hottest on record for the period.
From the start of June to the end of August, the average global temperature was 0.69C warmer than the long-term average. The record warmth was driven by temperatures far above average in countries such as China, Canada and Australia. The UK, by contrast, had its coolest summer since 2015, with the average temperature at 14.37C, 0.22C below the long-term average.
The abnormally hot summer at a global level has been driven largely by climate change. While a 13 month-long string of temperature records starting last summer was turbocharged by El Niño, a pattern of trade winds in the Pacific associated