England and Wales face The Warmest February on record

The Met Office said on Friday that England and Wales had their warmest February even on record this year. In this month the average temperature in England was 7.5C whereas in Wales. it was 6.9C. The UK as an entire country saw its second warmest February on record. Farmers are already taking the wave of it, they are losing corps floods while less frost is affecting the growth of trees like pears and apples. The provisional statistics are projecting warmer and wetter winters due to the drastic climate change. Average temperatures in February for the UK as a whole was 6.3C.

The recorded temperature of the United Kingdom as a whole is still below 1998’s February where it was 6.8C. However, this is a clear indication that climate change is making a recent and heavy impact. The results are also pretty evident – four of the UK’s 10 warmest Februarys have all come in the last six years since 1884. These were in 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2019. Data from daily weather reports is collected by The Met Office so before even February was over, the data showed that different parts of south Wales, the Midlands, and Lincolnshire have seen more than two-and-a-half times their normal rainfall in February. According to The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) report, some farms in Lincolnshire are still underwater and have been since last October.

Met Office’s meteorologist Annie Shuttleworth said, “It’s rained so many days on the trot that it’s just built levels up more and more, and we’re already at quite a saturated level.” “It comes at the end of what has been a wet winter season overall,” she said. “After December and January, we’d already had 90 per cent of the winter rainfall. You’d normally expect to be close to 65% by the end of January,” she continued. The provisional figures from the Met Office show that it was the 8th wettest February on record for the entire country.

Similarly, it has also been a mild winter as well where the lowest temperature came in January’s middle. Met Office climate scientist Dr. Mark McCarthy said that this year’s winter has been “notable for not having too many cold spells”. “That’s apparent in the number of days of frost we’ve had this winter. It might come out to be one of the least frosty winters in our historical records,” he continued. This also fits the long-term trend where the world’s climate has warmed by 1C in the last 50 or 60 years. Dr McCarthy states, “That 1C of warming is equivalent to about three weeks’ fewer frosts over the course of the year.”

Fewer touches of frost for several plants is not good news at all. According to Joe Richomme, the head of the kitchen garden at Kew Gardens, West London, frost is an essential part of the apple tree’s growth cycle, “particularly with traditional varieties, which need more of what we call chill hours – hours in the year where it’s between zero and six degrees.”