Tourists have been urged to take care in the extreme heat as the Cerberus heatwave continues to hit parts of southern Europe and north-west Africa.
Cerberus – named by the Italian Meteorological Society after the three-headed monster that features in Dante’s inferno – has taken hold across many popular British family holiday hotspots in the Mediterranean.
But could the heatwave hit the UK?
According to the Met Office, it’s unlikely.
Rebekah Sherwin, an expert meteorologist from the Met Office’s global forecasting team, said “unusually high” sea surface temperatures are also occurring across the Cerberus-hit region, with many parts of the Mediterranean seeing surface temperatures as high as 25C to 28C.
Of what this will mean for the UK, she explained: “This will exacerbate the effects of the heat over surrounding land areas, as even in coastal regions overnight temperatures are unlikely to drop much below the mid-20s Celsius.
“The southern shift of the jet stream that has pushed the high pressure southwards across this region has also led to low pressure systems being directed into the UK, bringing more unsettled and cooler weather here than we experienced in June when the jet stream was at a more northerly latitude.”
Gusts of 55mph are expected at the weekend, with a yellow Met Office wind warning in place across south-west England and Wales until Friday evening, before another one covering large swathes of central and southern England comes in on Saturday morning. They warn people to expect delays to road, rail, air and ferry transport as well as potential power cuts, large waves and damage to trees.
So all this is far from a heatwave.
And the Met Office said earlier this week that another heatwave is unlikely during the rest of the summer following record temperatures last month.
Temperatures are likely to remain a little below average for the rest of July, the weather service predicted.
It added it will return closer to normal by the start of August, but the chance of very warm or hot conditions looked lower than average.
A Met Office spokesperson told Yahoo News UK: “No heatwave is on the cards.”
Read more: How many more heatwaves will there be this summer?
The Cerberus heatwave comes after a new report revealed tens of thousands of people may have died in Europe’s sweltering heatwaves last summer, suggesting countries’ heat preparedness efforts are falling fatally short.
The study from European health institutes estimated more than 61,600 people died from heat-related causes across 35 European countries from late May to early September 2022, during Europe’s hottest summer on record.
The Met Office, meanwhile, previously announced June was the hottest on record.
Many parts of the UK were officially declared in a heatwave on 13 June after a spell of hot weather.
Sunday 25 June was the joint hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures reaching 32.2C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, matching the previous high set on 10 June in Chertsey, Surrey.
Coningsby is where the UK’s hottest ever temperature of 40.3C was recorded on 19 July last year.
Here, Yahoo News UK takes a look, from what we know, at what we can expect the weather to be like throughout the rest of the year.
What’s the threshold for a heatwave in the UK?
According to the Met Office, a heatwave is “an extended period of hot weather relative to the expected conditions of the area at that time of year, which may be accompanied by high humidity”.
The Met Office said the UK heatwave threshold is when when a location records a “period of at least three consecutive days” with daily maximum temperatures meeting or exceeding the heatwave temperature threshold.
This threshold varies by UK county, from 25C in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the North and South West of England, to 27C and 28C in the South East of England.
The Met Office said heatwaves are more likely because of climate change.
Worldwide weather is set to be hotter than ever later this year and next year as the predicted El Niño weather event was confirmed as having arrived.
What about El Niño?
Experts had predicted that the arrival of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) would not only see general global warming, but would also have a knock-on effect on global weather, with some warning of “unimaginable heat” this summer.
Last week the natural phenomenon – a recurring climate pattern involving changes in temperature in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean – was confirmed by US scientists as having started in the Pacific Ocean, with experts predicting its cycle will make 2024 the world’s hottest year.
During the last El Nino climate pattern, in 2016, the world saw its hottest year on record.
Read more: ‘Unimaginable heat’: Will this year’s El Niño cause a global warming surge?
The arrival of El Niño comes amid predictions of longer and “more intense” hot weather this summer, along with a new heatwave alert system launched in England in preparation for the spike in temperatures.
The new system, created by the Met Office and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) with a focus on the impact heatwaves could have on people’s health.
A dedicated online platform has been launched, covering an alert status for every area of England. Any “heat-health alerts” will include details on weather conditions expected over forthcoming days.
It will also give people an outline of the impacts they can expect, a brief overview of the regional impact assessment and links to additional information, advice and guidance.
The colour coded warning system comprises green, yellow, amber and red responses – the latter of which indicates “significant risk to life for even the healthy population” and requires an emergency response.
Experts have previously warned that the heatwaves and record high temperatures seen across England last summer are likely to happen more often, last longer and be more intense in coming years and decades.
What is the latest summer prediction for 2023?
The Met Office’s long-range forecast for 18-27 July read on Friday: “Spells of sunshine with a mixture of showers is expected for most in the west and north for the start of the week, although parts of the southeast likely to stay dry. Perhaps a risk of showery rainfall, heavy in places, possibly spreading from the west.
“Winds likely to stay light to moderate, which would most likely persist through the end of the week, with low pressure likely sitting north of UK. Northwesterly winds at first, becoming more westerly by the end of the period.
“This will continue to bring sunshine and showers, possibly longer spells of rain at times, but also more in the way of drier interludes than of late, especially in the south. Temperatures likely to remain a little below average for this time of year.”
What will the long-term UK weather be like in 2023?
Early forecasts suggest that this year’s El Niño could see global warming reach the crucial barrier of a 1.5C rise since pre-industrial times.
If this happens, it could lead to more heatwaves, longer hot seasons and shorter cold seasons, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Late last year the Met Office predicted temperatures in the UK during 2023 would be between 1.08C and 1.32C above the pre-industrial average – which is pretty close to this threshold.
It suggested that 2023 will be the 10th successive year that temperatures have reached at least 1C above pre-industrial levels.
Read more: Four possible consequences of El Niño returning in 2023
Experts have suggested three consecutive years of “La Niña” events (La Niña is the opposite, cooling phase of the ESNO) have possibly “masked” the true scale of global warming in recent years.
With the UN warning that no “credible pathway” is in place to keep temperatures below 1.5C, the UK could see heatwaves above 40C more frequently.
El Niño has now been confirmed as having started in the Pacific Ocean, with its effects expected to last into spring 2024.
Already this year England saw its driest February ever, followed by its wettest ever March, signalling another year of record-breaking weather.
Read more: Is climate change to blame for the 8,000km long seaweed blob floating toward Florida and Mexico?
Craig Snell, from the Met Office, said: “This time of year it’s not rare to have a prolonged dry spell. Go back to last year, when we had that unprecedented heatwave in July, parts of the south barely had a drop of rain for that entire month, parts of London only registered a millimetre of rain.
“That can happen when high pressure decides to settle itself across the UK, that keeps us dry, and that’s what we’ve seen for the last month or so.
Researchers from LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment previously said England is “not prepared to manage future extreme heat events, particularly if these were to occur more frequently at the same magnitude and duration”.
Concerns about how prepared the UK is for such high temperatures and their impact on the population has led to the development of measures such as the recently-introduced heat-health alerts.
Environment groups said this year’s heatwave has led to an “unprecedented” number of dead fish.
“The reports of the number of fish death incidents in rivers for this time of year has been unprecedented. I would normally expect rivers to be affected later in the summer when it’s hotter and drier,” Mark Owen, from the Angling Trust, told BBC News.
A marine heatwave, which saw sea surface temperatures rising to extreme levels around the UK was also recorded last month.