Scotland's weather: 2022 was warmest year ever, Met Office confirms with average temperature of 8.5 degrees

The average annual temperature in 2022 across the UK was more than 10C for the first time, with 2022 being the warmest on record in the 364-year Central England Temperature (CET) series, which began in 1659 and is the world’s longest-running temperature dataset.

The annual mean CET for 2022 was 11.1C, beating the previous record of 11.0C in 2014.

The data means 15 of the UK's top 20 warmest years on record have all occurred this century - with the entire top 10 within the past two decades.

The UK recorded an average annual temperature of more than 10C for the first time in 2022, the Met Office said as it confirmed last year was the country’s hottest on record.

England saw the highest average temperature at 10.94C, followed by Wales 10.23C and Northern Ireland experiencing 9.85C.

The warm conditions would have been expected once in 500 years under a natural climate, without humans warming the planet, but is now likely every three to four years in the current climate, the experts said.

Met Office climate attribution scientist, Dr Nikos Christidis, said: “To assess the impact of human-induced climate change on the record-breaking year of 2022, we used climate models to compare the likelihood of a UK mean temperature of 10C in both the current climate and with historical human climate influences removed.

“The results showed that recording 10C in a natural climate would occur around once every 500 years, whereas in our current climate it could be as frequently as once every three to four years.”

He added that by the end of the century with medium levels of greenhouse gas emissions, a UK average temperature of 10C could occur almost every year.