{"id":396279,"date":"2025-09-04T04:02:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T04:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/396279\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T04:02:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T04:02:17","slug":"this-was-the-hottest-summer-on-record-if-it-happens-again-next-year-britains-ecosystems-wont-cope-lucy-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/396279\/","title":{"rendered":"This was the hottest summer on record. If it happens again next year, Britain\u2019s ecosystems won\u2019t cope | Lucy Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does British summertime mean to you? Blackberries? Picnics? Festivals? Ticks? This summer has been the hottest on record in the UK<\/a>. As human-caused climate breakdown intensifies, the outdoor areas we spend time in are changing \u2013 and so, too, are our relationships with the land and the ecosystems we live in.<\/p>\n

My home is in the south of England, near beautiful woodlands. Since moving there in 2016, the number of ticks my family has picked up in the woods has increased each year, but this summer has been astonishing. For a few weeks, our four-year-old came home from nursery with a tick almost every day. I\u2019ve had many: some tiny nymphal ones that could be easily missed. We spend time in Scotland, too, and find ticks often when we go there now.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve become adept at removing the blighters with a special tool, protecting ourselves and checking the kids \u2013 but there are dangers. Lyme disease is increasing<\/a>, and the potentially deadly tick-borne encephalitis<\/a> has also been found in the UK. In the US, there are 500,000 new cases of Lyme disease<\/a> per year. Sometimes I wonder if it\u2019s only a matter of time before the risks of spending time in these woods \u2013 beloved spaces, like a second home \u2013 could outweigh the benefits.<\/p>\n

Last week, we went down to Kimmeridge Bay<\/a> in Dorset. The weather was glorious, we saw pale blue cushion starfish<\/a> and crabs, shrimps and fossils, but the surrounding yellowed, parched fields were eerie, and a reminder of the uncanniness of this moment. I felt a jolt of solastalgia<\/a>, a word coined by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the \u201cdistress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a complex experience, living in this time of climate crisis, with a human brain that is short-termist, generally optimistic and present-oriented. Maybe the fields were as yellow and dead at the end of August when I was a child? Maybe I imagine that we used to see more swifts? Or butterflies? Or hedgehogs? (This is shifting baseline syndrome<\/a>, and the statistics show both consistent declines of species and hotter summers.)<\/p>\n

Day to day, our summer has been good because we\u2019ve been able to be outside and enjoy the sunshine. Yes, a tree in our garden has died, drought possibly a factor. The frogs didn\u2019t survive, perhaps because the pond dried up. I don\u2019t swim as much in the local rivers \u2013 an activity I have found highly therapeutic \u2013 because of pollution levels. I\u2019m getting used to the feeling of solastalgia.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s become harder to get used to how very hot it has been in the past few years. I hated the extreme heatwave of 2022<\/a>, where temperatures reached 40C for the first time (since records began) in the UK. With a baby and young children at home, we simply couldn\u2019t go outside. And when we could, everything was dead and quiet. It was depressing and frightening.<\/p>\n

With the extreme heat projected in the coming decades, going outside in the summer will be harder: festivals and outdoor sports events will be too dangerous<\/a>; opportunities for people to unwind and relax in nature may decrease.<\/p>\n

The impacts of climate change on the British summer will be unequal<\/a> across class, race and socioeconomic lines. More deprived areas<\/a> are less likely to have tree cover for shade. The homes of lower-income families, renters, those with children and ethnic minority households are more likely to overheat.<\/p>\n

A common swift at the entrance to a human-made nest box in Norfolk. Photograph: Kevin Elsby\/Alamy<\/p>\n

And the countries most vulnerable to severe climate-related breakdown \u2013 those in the global south, who are not responsible for climate change caused by human activity \u2013 are facing summers projected to be much more deadly and violent than those in the northern hemisphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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But in the UK\u2019s new heatwaves and drought, the health of ecosystems \u2013 in other words, life \u2013 is threatened. Wildlife<\/a> can become dehydrated and struggle to find food and water. Trees may die; plants may reduce flowering and seed production. Without food plants caterpillars can\u2019t survive, which means fewer butterflies and moths. If fruit ripens early, it may not be around for winter migrants such as fieldfares or redwings, or for hibernating species such as dormice. High temperatures and falling water levels threaten freshwater ecosystems by shrinking habitats and concentrating levels of pollutants and sewage.<\/p>\n

When I approached our wildlife and nature NGOs about how the British summertime is playing out with the living world, they were keen to tell me what we can do to help our non-human neighbours. Suggestions included: increasing moisture-retaining wildflowers in public spaces and road verges; watering trees; keeping ponds topped up; leaving out shallow dishes of water with pebbles in them so bees and butterflies can safely drink too; letting areas of grass grow long; creating shade with log piles.<\/p>\n

We know what the government and business need to do. Stop burning fossil fuels. Our leaders are going for economic growth at any cost, even if any cost means the collapse of the precious web of life on Earth as we know it. How many more record-breaking summers will we ignore?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What does British summertime mean to you? Blackberries? Picnics? Festivals? Ticks? This summer has been the hottest on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-396279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115144041825896112","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}