For the purpose of taking temperature measurements to build a picture of long-term climate change, there are few places more unsuitable than an airport runway.
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and all weather observations are used to paint a picture of the uk and the world's changing climate. if we want to understand our climate of the future, the first step is we need to understand our climate now and we also need to understand our climate going back into the past. all these sleeping bags and tents are for people in pakistan still homeless after one of the country's most devastating floods. i will report on 2022's biggest storms and look at what happens after weather disaster strikes. i am at raf coningsby, not only a place very close to my heart in that it is where i began my forecasting career, but to british meteorology it's a very important place, because this july at this
across parts of asia too, including here in china after its worst heatwave on record. and for the first time, japan hit 40 degrees in the month ofjune during its second hottest summer which was then followed by its warmest autumn. but the most haunting image from that hot summer is of spanish farmer angel martin arjona, hailed as a hero as he used his bulldozer to dig a trench to stop a fire from spreading. although he escaped the flames alive, he suffered severe burns and tragically died from his injuries in october. figures show the number of excess deaths reported during the heatwaves in spain, france, germany and the uk numbered more than 20,000. raf coningsby is home to front line combat—ready squadrons protecting uk airspace whatever the weather, so it's crucial they get the most accurate forecast. so here we are in the met office forecast office. it's 20 years since i've been in this particular room. it has changed a little bit.
in the chair where i used to once sit is our forecaster today, alice summerfield. you were here on that day back injuly when we saw the temperature of 40.3 celsius recorded here in coningsby. what was it like to see that here? it was something that was never expected in the uk. and here at coningsby it was even more incredible and remarkable because our previous max temperature was nowhere near, i think we beat it by about 5.5 degrees on that day, so it was extreme for the uk as a whole and even more extreme for the local area. at what point did you realise that coningsby was going to be the hottest place ever recorded in the uk? it has to go through quite vigorous quality control before we actually officially get the record, so obviously by the evening, we were pretty sure no one was going to beat us, beat that 40.3 record, but we actually were not officially holding the uk record until a few days later when they came and did the quality control