England SE & Central South Climate – Sep 2026September 2026 Update

The Thames frost fairs end (Little Ice Age)

The Thames froze solid at London at least 24 times between 1400 and 1814, giving rise to 'frost fairs' on the ice (1608, 1683-84, 1716, 1739-40, 1789, 1814) during the 'Little Ice Age' (~14th century to ~1850). It has never frozen solid enough for a fair since.

Historic UK, The History Press

Post-WWII industrial expansion begins

After the Second World War, coal and oil use grew rapidly across Europe, North America and the Soviet Union. Global sulphur dioxide emissions rose from about 30 to about 130 million tonnes a year by 1980, and the sulphate haze they formed masked part of the greenhouse warming underneath - the effect known as 'global dimming'.

Klimont et al. 2013

The Great Smog of London

A temperature inversion traps coal smoke over London from 5 to 9 December 1952. Sulphur dioxide from domestic fires and industry turns to sulphuric acid in the fog; initial estimates put the death toll near 4,000, and modern work puts it closer to 12,000. It led directly to the Clean Air Act of 1956.

Britannica, Wikipedia

The Gunnersbury tornado

An F3 tornado cuts a 19km path through west London on 8 December 1954, tearing through Gunnersbury and Acton and injuring more than thirty people - one of the strongest tornadoes recorded in Britain.

Wikipedia

UK Clean Air Act

Passed in direct response to London's Great Smog of December 1952, which killed around 12,000 people. The Act created smoke control areas and curbed domestic coal burning - the start of the long fall in British aerosol pollution that later unmasked greenhouse warming.

The National Archives, Clean Air Act 1956, The Clean Air Act 1964 (Appointed Day)…

The Big Freeze of 1962-63

1963 is this region's coldest year in the site's own record, with 1962 third coldest. Snow reached southern England on Boxing Day 1962 with up to 30cm in places, and the freeze held until early March.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2), Royal Meteorological Society, Norfolk Live

Agung eruption

Agung's eruption in Bali put a veil of sulphate haze into the stratosphere that cooled global temperature by about 0.3°C over 1963-66.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

The Great Flood of 1968

A deep trough brings exceptionally heavy rain and thunderstorms to south-east England in mid-September 1968, worst on Sunday the 15th. More than 14,000 properties flood across Surrey, Sussex, Kent and the Thames tributaries, following one of the UK's wettest summers on record.

Great Flood of 1968

The 1976 UK drought

Parts of southern England took under 55% of their average rainfall across the 16 dry months from May 1975 to August 1976 - the driest share anywhere in the country. Standpipes appeared in the streets and a Drought Act was rushed through Parliament.

Royal Meteorological Society, Met Office, Royal Meteorological Society (2)

Global SO2 emissions peak

Global sulphur dioxide emissions peak at about 130 million tonnes a year, then begin a long decline as Europe, North America and Japan clean up their air. As the aerosol mask thins, the rate of global warming picks up through the 1980s.

Klimont et al. 2013

The 1981 tornado outbreak

On 23 November 1981, 104 confirmed tornadoes touch down across England and Wales in a single day - the largest tornado outbreak ever recorded in Europe. The worst damage is in Leicester, where hundreds of homes are hit and 24 people are injured as part of a school collapses.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2)

The Thames Barrier becomes operational

Built in direct response to the 1953 flood, the Thames Barrier's ten steel gates begin protecting 125 square kilometres of central London in 1982. It has closed over 200 times in its first forty years - nine successive tides in 2003 alone - and the rising closure rate is one of the clearest local measures of sea-level rise.

Carbon Brief, London Museum

El Chichón eruption

A sulphur-rich eruption in Mexico whose aerosol cloud stayed in the stratosphere for more than two years, cooling the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.2°C.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program

The Great Storm of 1987

Sussex, Surrey and Kent took the worst of the Great Storm - the strongest gust of the night, 100 knots (185 km/h), was recorded at Shoreham on the Sussex coast, and Greater London, Kent and the Home Counties all saw gusts with a one-in-200-year return period.

Wikipedia

The Big Freeze of January 1987

A Siberian easterly buries eastern and southern England between 11 and 14 January 1987. Over 50cm of snow falls across South East England, locally 75cm, and Caldecott in Rutland drops to -23.3°C on the 13th - with daytime maxima of -6 to -8°C across much of the south.

Wikipedia, The Weather Outlook

Daytime warming catches up with the night-led pattern

Across 1961-90, 81% of the world's land saw nights warming faster than days. Across 1991-2020 the pattern reversed: 70% saw days warming faster, as the industrial haze that had been dimming daytime sunshine was cleaned up. The study compares two fixed thirty-year windows; measured as a turning point, this site's own global series turns around 1982.

Zhong et al. 2023

The Burns' Day Storm

Gusts passed 92mph along the coast as far east as Kent on 25 January 1990, with hourly mean winds above 46mph across southern England. The storm struck in the middle of the day, which is why it killed 47 people against the Great Storm of 1987's 18.

Met Office, Royal Meteorological Society

August 1990 UK heatwave breaks 79-year record

The August 1990 heatwave pushed temperatures past 32°C across southern, central and eastern England from the 1st to the 4th, with several swathes above 35°C on the 3rd. The UK record of 37.1°C that day went to Cheltenham, just west of this region.

Wikipedia, history.co.uk, Met Office

Positive NAO phase dominates the 1990s

England shows the weakest and least consistent response of the four nations. The NAO's wet/dry signature is reliable in the north-west, but across central, southern and eastern England it varies considerably from winter to winter - those areas sit in the lee of the uplands, and research finds the separate East Atlantic pattern exerts more influence on their rainfall than the NAO does.

Hurrell 1995, Science, Atmosphere, 2021, Frontiers, 2022NAO Tracker

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flipped to a warm phase in 1995. For the UK it is one of the background rhythms sitting underneath the warming trend: warm AMO phases are associated with warmer North Atlantic surface waters on the UK's doorstep, and have been linked to wetter summers in parts of north-west Europe. It is a natural cycle of roughly 60-70 years, so it shifts the baseline rather than driving the long-term trend - which matters when reading any UK record set since the mid-1990s.

Learn more →

The autumn 2000 floods

2000 is this region's wettest year in its 1900-2025 record, at 1,109mm, and its autumn was the wettest too. On 12 October, after days of storms, the Uck swept through Uckfield up to 1.9m deep and the Sussex Ouse overwhelmed the defences at Lewes, flooding more than 600 homes and 300 businesses in the town.

Lewes Town Council, Met Office

August 2003 European heatwave (UK)

The UK's first 38.5°C reading was taken in this region - at Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent, on 10 August 2003. It stood as the national record for sixteen years. Excess mortality in London ran 40% above normal during the heatwave, the highest anywhere in the country.

Met Office / ONS, Impact of the 2003 heat wave on daily…

Summer 2007 UK floods

May-July 2007 brought this region 326mm of rain, its wettest such spell in a record going back to 1900. In late July up to 140mm fell in 24 hours on the upper Thames catchment: around 1,500 people were evacuated in Abingdon and 250 homes in west Oxford, and nationally the floods led to the Pitt Review of flood management.

South Oxford Flood Action, FloodList

Negative NAO blocking cluster, 2009-2013

December 2010 was the second coldest December in the Central England Temperature record, which runs back to 1659 - just 0.1°C short of the all-time record set in 1890. It was England's coldest month of any kind since February 1986, driven by a run of blocked, negative-NAO winters between 2009 and 2013.

4byo, Met Office, WikipediaNAO Tracker

Start of the sustained rise in UK heatwave frequency

This region has the highest heatwave count anywhere in the UK: its own Heatwave Days rose from a decade mean of 4.52 days in the 2000s to 8.74 in the 2010s, and 16.09 so far in the 2020s - more than three and a half times the 2000s figure.

Met Office, State of the UK Climate

UK's post-2013 warmth acceleration

8 of this region's 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2013, and 2022 - the year it first passed 40°C - was the warmest of all.

Met Office, State of the UK Climate

Somerset Levels floods, winter 2013-14

The Thames Valley was the other focus of the 2013-14 winter floods, alongside the Somerset Levels in the south west, during England and Wales' wettest winter since the rainfall series began in 1766.

Met Office

England and Wales' wettest winter since 1766

Winter 2013-14 (December to February) brought this region 514mm of rain - almost two and a half times its 1961-90 average, and its wettest winter since this site's Met Office regional record begins in 1901. Across England and Wales as a whole it was the wettest winter since the series began in 1766.

Met Office, Kendon et al. 2015, England and Wales Precipitation series

2015-2025: the eleven warmest years on record

Globally, the eleven warmest years on record have all happened since 2015. England SE & Central South's own record is a looser fit - seven of its eleven warmest fall in that span, with 2014, 2011, 2006 and 2002 outside it. Its warmest year is 2022.

Learn more →

The Beast from the East

The lowest temperature of the 2018 cold wave was recorded in this region - -14.2°C at Faversham in Kent, which by coincidence also held England's 2003 heat record of 38.5°C. Siberian air reached the south coast as Storm Emma pushed north into it. It followed a sudden stratospheric warming in mid-February that split the polar vortex.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2)Polar Vortex Tracker

Low-sulphur shipping fuel rule (IMO 2020)

New international shipping rules cut the sulphur allowed in ship fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% almost overnight, removing about 8 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year. With less sulphate haze over the oceans, it may have added around 0.1°C of warming by 2023-24.

Gettelman et al. 2024

The UK's wettest February on record, 2020

February 2020 brought this region 137.2mm of rain, more than two and a half times its 1961-90 average and its 4th-wettest February in this site's Met Office record from 1900 - as Storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge followed one another in on a strong, southward-shifted jet stream. Its wettest remains February 1951, with 154.2mm.

Davies et al. (2021), Carbon Brief / Met Office, NOAA CPCPolar Vortex / AO

The UK's first 40°C day

Heathrow reached 40.2°C on 19 July 2022, this region's own first 40°C reading, hours before Coningsby in Lincolnshire took the UK record to 40.3°C. Forty-six stations beat the previous UK record of 38.7°C that day - the one set at Cambridge in 2019, which had itself beaten Faversham's 38.5°C from 2003.

Met Office review (via Carbon Brief), Met Office, Wikipedia, Met Office (2)

2022 South East England drought / hosepipe bans

England's driest July since 1935 left Bewl Water reservoir (Kent/East Sussex) exposed; South East Water imposed a usage ban across Kent and Sussex from 12 August 2022 - the region's first hosepipe ban since 2012.

Met Office