The United Kingdom on Tuesday clocked a record-breaking temperature of 40.2 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Previously, the record sat at 101.6 degrees Fahrenheit in 2019, and it’s the first time the country has seen a temperature above 40 degrees Celsius, according to the U.K. Met Office, Britain’s weather organization. The record-breaking temperature, recorded around 1 p.m. local time, was not expected to arrive until July 2050, according to climate scientists. The heat wave sweeping Europe has created hellish scenes, including dangerous wildfires and more than a thousand deaths. In Spain, a man was engulfed in flames when his excavator caught fire as he dug a trench in an attempt to stop an encroaching wildfire. Tuesday’s all-time high in Britain followed the hottest night on record, too. “This unprecedented red warning for extreme heat is a wake-up call about the climate emergency. Even as a climate scientist who studies this stuff, this is scary. This feels real,” a natural hazards researcher said Monday in a statement to the country’s Science Media Center.
