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LONDON: Britain had its hottest summer since records began, provisional Met Office statistics published on Tuesday said, after a season of intense heat and drought that has tested infrastructure, food production \u200band wildfire-fighting capacity.<\/strong><\/p>\n The agency said Britain had experienced record warmth for the \u200bsecond summer in a row, according to statistics that go back \u2060to 1884, as man-made climate change has greatly increased the likelihood of extreme weather.<\/span><\/p>\n The \u200bcountry\u2019s five warmest summers have all been recorded since 2003.<\/span><\/p>\n On the day meteorological autumn begins \u200bin Britain, the Met Office said this summer\u2019s average mean temperature of 16.5 degrees Celsius (61.7 degrees Fahrenheit) was \u201cmade around 130 times more likely due to human-induced climate change\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n In a climate free from \u200bhuman-generated greenhouse gases, the UK would experience a summer like 2026 roughly once in \u200b1,000 years, Mark McCarthy, the agency\u2019s head of climate attribution, said.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn our current climate, which is \u200cchanging \u2060because of the effect of burning of fossil fuels, we should now expect this to be roughly a 1-in-9 year event,\u201d he added in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n Compared with even hotter temperatures in mainland Europe \u2013 where heatwaves have claimed hundreds of \u200blives, disrupted power supplies \u200band shut schools \u2013 \u2060the consequences in Britain are relatively mild.<\/span><\/p>\n A drought has, however, been declared in much of the country and Britain has endured \u200ban unprecedented number of wildfires, which in extreme cases destroyed homes.<\/span><\/p>\n Heat and \u200bdrought have \u2060also affected farming, with Britain\u2019s cereal harvest on track to be the worst since comparable records began in 1984.<\/span><\/p>\nSEVERE HEAT IS INCREASINGLY NORMAL<\/span><\/h2>\n