The world laughs at Britain’s heatwaves – they really shouldn’t

Is there anything more quintessentially British than complaining about the weather? A fortnight ago we were griping that it was too cold. This week we’re grumbling that it’s too hot. We’re basically Goldilocks at this point. During the hot weather the UK has endured this week, I couldn’t help but feel a flicker of guilt every time I bemoaned that my clothes were stuck to my frame with sweat as I travelled on the tube, or that my high-energy Zumba class was nigh-on unbearable in the unaired heat of the local sports centre. What right did I – did any of us – have to complain, after months of carping about the washout that was April, May and most of June? Surely we should simply appreciate the gift of a few days of sun and the mercury finally rising to an acceptable level? This guilt was also tinged with embarrassment. Let’s be frank – it hasn’t even been that hot. We’ve barely pushed above 25C. The rest of the world must be laughing at us, wilting in temperatures a full 10-15C below what they would consider spicy. But then a recent Twitter/X thread by an American explaining that, in fact, the UK wasn’t a nation of total pansies caught my eye and assuaged my shame. “I’m gonna explain to y’all why Britain considers 78F/25C hot,” wrote Josh Ellis. “I know hot because I grew up in Texas and spent half my life in Las Vegas. So I am absolutely qualified to explain this to the rest of you who laugh at UK ‘heatwaves’.” He went on to hypothesise that humidity played a significant role in Britain feeling hotter than its modest temperatures would suggest: “l’m outside right now and it’s 76F [24C] and 53 per cent humidity and it feels like I’m in a sauna. Thank God the clouds are out because earlier it was really unpleasant. Understand me when I tell you I am used to heat most of you can’t imagine. This is still nasty and gross to me.” His theory has legs, Jim NR Dale, senior meteorologist at British Weather Services and co-author of Surviving Extreme Weather, tells me. “You can go to a desert that’s over 30C in, say, Tunisia, and it’s very hot but it’s a dry heat,” he says. “Whereas here, if we get humidity into the atmosphere as we’ve seen over the last few days, that mixture is very different. With humidity, we experience the inability to lose sweat from the skin’s surface to cool us down in a natural way.” Dr Simon Keeling of Weather Consultancy Services agrees that the humidity has been high “and that’s why it’s feeling much hotter than the recorded temperatures at the moment. If the air were drier, then the heat would feel far more comfortable, a little like it does when you go into Europe with temperatures of 30 to 35C and, although it’s hot, it really doesn’t feel that uncomfortable.” It’s the same reason heat in tropical climates such as Thailand and Malaysia feels much tougher to endure than dry, desert countries in the Middle East and north Africa. “It’s not as bad here as in south Asia, but nonetheless, because of that injection of moisture in the atmosphere, it feels uncomfortable – like you can’t do anything,” says Dale. “Even in your own home you can still feel that humidity. It induces a lazy, languid, sleepy feeling.” He also puts it down to Brits’ lack of experience when it comes to extreme temperatures – hot or cold. “We live in a temperate climate and so obviously we cope less well when temperatures are extreme in either direction; we’re not used to it,” he adds. But our infrastructure also plays a major part in making the UK seem sweltering. Our buildings and transport systems weren’t originally designed with cooling in mind. “The houses are built to retain heat, not circulate breezes,” tweeted Ellis. “The climate has always been coldish-cool and it’s crazy humid. Like Florida humid. It rains a lot. The closest climate to it I’m familiar with is Seattle. Know what people in climates like that don’t have? Air conditioning. They didn’t need it until recently.” The World Economic Forum published a warning in 2022 that UK infrastructure is “under threat” when dealing with temperatures it’s unequipped to handle. Currently, 20 per cent of existing infrastructure is at risk of overheating, and this “will rise as average temperatures continue to increase”. And this isn’t just referring to buildings, but rail, road, water pipes, our electricity grid… Meanwhile, the UK and Switzerland are two of the countries that need to adapt the most for global heating, scientists have predicted, with both likely to see a 30 per cent increase in the number of days of uncomfortably hot temperatures if the world heats by 2C