City's 2025 temperatures fall short of record

Temperatures in a city in 2025 are unlikely to have been the hottest in its history, despite it potentially being the hottest year on record across the UK.

The Radcliffe Meteorological Station in Oxford said the city has not hit the heights of the UK average air temperature this year.

Station observer Kitty Attwood said 2025 is thought to have been the fourth-hottest on record in the city, with 2022, 1995 and 1990 having potentially higher temperatures.

However, a station spokesperson said the county's temperatures were still "concerning" as climate change continues to drive them upwards.

The Radcliffe Meterological Station in Oxford has been measuring the temperature of the city since the early 1800s.

Rachel Kite, a professor of practice in climate policy at the University of Oxford, said the Met Office data meant high temperatures were now the "new normal" for the UK: "The question now is 'how are we going to prepare ourselves and build our own resilience to this?'.

"We're on a much better path than we were 10 years ago, but we're not where we need to be."

She said the pollution created in the past 20 to 30 years was now the main driver of higher temperatures: "Not curbing emissions well enough means we're going to continue to see these kinds of impacts."

The Met Office's projection uses observed temperatures up to 21 December and assumes that the remaining days of the year follow the long-term December average.

As a result, the Met Office cannot say with certainty that 2025 will be the hottest year, but it is the most likely outcome.

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