The Government needs to lead from the front in mitigating the effects of heatwaves - Jayne Dowle

Oh yes, and we’re likely to run out of drinking water within the next decade or so too, due to prolonged droughts and not building enough reservoirs to meet demand from new homes and infrastructure, the water minister, Emma Hardy warns. In a move not yet widely reported, the government has already seized planning approval of new reservoir projects from local councils in East Anglia and Lincolnshire.

Meanwhile, the Environment Agency has declared drought in our region, following the warmest spring for mean temperature in Yorkshire since records began in 1884.

Two weeks ago Yorkshire Water reservoir stocks were at 62.3 per cent, significantly below the average, 85.5 per cent, for this time of year. This didn’t hit me until I drove over the Woodhead Pass last week and saw the reservoir there was bereft.

Writing in the journal Weather, a team of Met Office scientists used computer models to simulate how likely the country is to see a repeat of the unprecedented 40C recorded three years ago. And who can forget those terrible days of July 2022?

Even here in Barnsley, a town hitherto unknown for any kind of Mediterranean climate, it was so hot that spontaneous fires erupted; two homes burned to the ground on Woodlands Drive, just two miles from where I live. There were power cuts, moorland conflagrations, and even climate change deniers were forced to admit that such extreme weather was a significant move away from the norm.

The Met Office team found a 50 per cent chance of 40C occurring again in the next 12 years.

This likelihood has increased hugely in the past few decades due to global warming, they say. In the 1960s the chance of a year with temperatures hitting 40C was vanishingly small, at 0.2 per cent. By 2023, it had risen to 4.2 per cent. The likelihood will increase further in coming years as carbon emissions continue to drive up global temperatures, the experts note.

Whilst the cynical will scoff at this, and those of us with long enough memories remember that ‘summer of ‘76’, when Tarmac melted on the roads and there were standpipes in the streets, even a climate change denier cannot deny that our summers are getting hotter.

And rising temperatures are part of waves of extreme weather, including heavy rain, flash floods and high winds, which signal that the temperate UK climate we have taken for granted – and complained about, obviously – for centuries is shifting on its axis.

Net zero ambitions or not, we can’t change the weather, as we Brits are fond of saying. But this powerlessness in the face of nature brings with it new threats. For example, the very young and the elderly in particular are vulnerable to extreme heat and dehydration; the NHS needs resources to cope.

I argued back in 2022 that at the very least, a task-force with the powers of COBRA, the government’s emergency committee, must be put in place to direct the way the public must learn to adapt to this ‘new normal’.

We can deny climate change, but we can’t deny that we need to change.

Those 1.5m new homes the government promises to build? They must be built with concern for cooling and shading, designed to use as little energy as possible and to harness that powerful sun through PV (photovoltaic) technology.

Proposed new transport links, such as city trams and rail line extensions? Engineered so their systems don’t buckle in the heat, and are comfortable to travel on without putting passengers at risk of collapse from heat exhaustion.

The government’s promise of a network of technology hubs to power the future of communications, security and energy? They will need copious and reliable amounts of water for cooling and can’t rely on over-burdened existing reservoirs.

We may take small steps ourselves, from learning to close curtains when temperatures soar to making provision for our pets – according to home retailer Wilko, searches for ‘dog cooling products’ jumped a whopping 400 per cent on Google Trends over the last few days.

However, we need a responsible government to first of all accept and acknowledge that our climate is changing, and to lead from the front.