Cath: Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We are the charity, and think tank, dedicated to achieving ambitious leadership for the environment. I’m Cath Smith, head of social impact at Green Alliance, and today I’m joined by meteorologist Gemma Plum and Mete Coban, Deputy Mayor of London for the environment and energy.

Today, we’ll be discussing the impact of this summer’s heatwaves on communities and how we can better prepare for rising temperatures and build resilience to the impacts of climate change.

Now I’m joined by Gemma Plum, meteorologist and climate communicator, from Weather Change. Welcome, Gemma. I was just wondering if you could start off by talking a little bit about what has been happening with our weather this summer and, like, how it is being impacted by climate change.

Gemma: Yeah, it’s been an exceptional summer in terms of heatwaves. We’ve had five heatwaves across parts of the UK. We’ve had record-breaking temperatures in May and in June. We broke a number of temperature records this summer. We had 35 degrees, temperatures of 35 degrees, or higher, in May, June, July and August.

That’s the first time we’ve had that on record happening. And the Met Office released some statistics that told us that it was the hottest summer on record for the UK this year, and that this record-breaking summer had been made around 130 times more likely by climate change. Climate change is making heatwaves more frequent, more intense, and longer-lasting as well.

We are seeing that happening this year, and we’re going to continue to see climate change making our summers hotter and drier.

Cath: We’re also hearing reports of a potential super El Nino next summer. How do large weather patterns like that develop, and what could that mean for us in the UK?

Gemma: Yeah, there’s a number of weather patterns that occur around the world. One of them is El Niño. It develops in the Pacific Ocean, so the eastern Pacific Ocean. We start to see warmer water starting to well up in this area. And there’s a strong relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere, and we see the weather changing around the world.

It has more of an impact around places that are closer to the Pacific Ocean. Australia sees an increased risk of drought and wildfires. But in terms of the UK, there are so- there are some impacts that we can see, um, from an El Niño developing. One of them is an increased risk of wetter and stormier weather in the autumn and early winter, and there are already signs that we could see that developing this year.

Cath: Okay, interesting. And then beyond the, the direct impacts of the heatwaves, you’ve touched on this a bit already, but, like, how does it increase other weather risks like the drought, wildfires, storms, flooding?

Gemma: Yeah, we see climate change exacerbating the risk of these other events, such as droughts and wildfires occurring. For example, we had a lot of hot and dry weather this year that allows the vegetation to dry out, that means that there’s more fuel for wildfires to ignite and spread if they are ignited.

So that brings an increased risk of wildfires. But in terms of drought as well, we saw a lack of rainfall this year. It was very dry. Some places went over 50, 60 days without any rainfall this year. But also, the high temperatures mean that we see increased evaporation from vegetation and from soils and from rivers, and that brings a risk of drought as well.

So we see climate change exacerbating the risk of droughts and wildfires occurring.

Cath: how are some of these impacts over this summer affecting communities and how are people responding across the UK?

Gemma: Yeah, we’ve seen a number of impacts. There’s been a, a large number of health impacts. We’ve seen wildfires and droughts that we’ve already mentioned., At one stage, we had three-quarters of England that was in a drought. The whole of Wales was in a drought.

But also we’ve seen impacts to wildlife, to nature. There’s been impacts widespread. We’ve seen, um, false autumn, which is when the trees go into a sort of survival mode and they start to drop their leaves, in a way to conserve energy. We’ve seen, some trees just dropping their limbs and their, branches because they’re under so much stress.

There’s been so many impacts to wild- wildlife as well. So yeah, it’s been a combination of impacting to us directly in terms of health. Transport as well has been a massive thing. There’s been transport delays and cancellations on the trains, for example, um, but also to nature and to wildlife as well

Cath: and what would you say are the steps that the government would need to take to prepare for the impacts of extreme heat in coming years? Do you have any do you have a wish list for the government?

Gemma: I mean, there’s a number of things we can be doing. We need to think about how we adapt to the extreme heat that we’re already seeing. We need to think about how our care homes, our hospitals, how our schools, how they can all function in the extreme heat that we’re having. We need to think about other things, for example, how can we keep our, our homes cool?

We need to look to other countries potentially to see how they deal with extreme heat, to see how we can do it in the UK as well. We also need to think about things, for example, in our cities whether we can add more green spaces, because we see in areas where we have lots of trees, it’s much cooler.

So we do need to think about how we adapt to our climate that has already changed, and how it will change as we continue to warm our climate, but we also need to think about mitigation as well. We need to be reducing our emissions, so we need to be doing both at the same time.

Cath: That’s really interesting. And I guess you do a lot of communicating this in the media and to the public. I’m wondering if you’re seeing any shifts or any differences in how people are responding this summer compared to previous years.

Gemma: Yeah, we, it’s, we have seen a lot of coverage. There’s been huge amounts of coverage of the heat this year. The droughts and wildfires got lots of coverage as well. There’s been a large amount of that coverage has mentioned climate change, which, uh, which I think is really important. We need to be explaining to people that the weather is linked to our changing climate, um, and that what we’re already seeing is because we’ve already warmed our climate, and we’re going to see further impacts as we continue to, warm things.

So we have seen, things in the media already, but we need more. We need to be talking about it way more. Um, we also need to think about how we’re communicating it, whether it is through the weather or whether it’s through the impacts that we’re seeing, whether it’s to health or infrastructure, transport, nature.

And also I think we need to think about the visuals that we use as well to explain extreme heat. That’s a really important thing that we need to be thinking about.

Cath: Yeah, it just touches people’s lives in so many different ways, doesn’t it? It’s working out how to reach people in different conversations. Do you think this summer tells us something about how the UK is going to look in future and when we’re projecting out in five, five, 10 years?

Do you think we’re learning at the moment how we can be dealing with that in future and the sort of impacts we’ll be experiencing?

Gemma: Yes and no. I think we are learning from what we’re already seeing happening, um, but we n- need to be learning quicker and making changes. In terms of how our weather is already changing, we are already seeing heatwaves, like I mentioned, happening more frequently.

They’re more intense. We’re seeing more of these extreme temperatures as well. But we need to be aware that those heatwaves are going to become even more frequent. They’ll become even more intense. We could see temperatures even higher than we’re seeing now. There was, so this year was the anniversary of the 1976 summer and there was some analysis that was done that looked at how a similar heatwave to 1976 would look like if it occurred today and in, and in the future and it looked at what a similar heatwave could look like in 2056.

Gemma: and it showed that potentially we could see temperatures as high as 45 degrees. We could see nine consecutive days with temperatures over 40 degrees. So that’s a climate and the weather that we could be seeing if we continue with our emissions and we continue to warm our climate. So yeah, we’re potentially could see temperatures even higher than we’ve already.

Cath: So during moments like this where we are experiencing extreme climate impacts and there’s a lot of public interest, it seems like there are a lot of politicians talking about it, the media covers it, but very quickly afterwards, momentum tends to die down. And I wonder if you have any insights into what we could do as a sector or how we could be working to better keep this momentum up and keep this in the news and keep going until we get serious action on this issue?

Gemma: Yeah, and that’s some of the work that I do in my role is that we try and tell climate stories. So we’re showing the impacts that we’re seeing from our changing weather because of climate change. So we can talk about things like food prices. Farming’s been massively impacted during this, these heatwaves and drought.

We can talk about how the sports that people like to enjoy are impacted, how nature is being impacted. So there’s so many ways that we are being impacted by our changing climate, and I think when we don’t have extreme weather, we can still be talking about climate change in those ways by telling these stories about how we’re being impacted, but then the solutions that are being put in place. How are people adapting to these things? So there’s so many stories that we can be telling, and we just need to be telling more of them.

Cath: And then my very final question, which we’re asking everyone, is if you had just one thing that you were going to ask the government to do in response to climate impacts, what would you be asking them to do right now?

Gemma: I think it would just be to be taking action, to be doing something towards it. We know what the issue is. We know how it’s already affecting our weather. We know what is projected to happen in the future, but things are just not happening. So we need to just be doing things quicker than they’re already happening.

I think that, that would be one of the messages is just to, let’s start taking action. Let’s start doing stuff now.

Gemma: Yeah, it’s so true. Like, we’ve, we’ve known for so long that this is happening, and now it’s happening all around us. Um, and it’s still, it still feels like we’re surprised that we’ve not, we’re not prepared. And it’s just taking, those first steps, and moving towards more ambitious action I think would have an enormous impact.

Cath: Thank you so much, Gemma. This has been really, really interesting. Really appreciate all your insights.

Cath: So today I’m joined by Mete Coban who’s Deputy Mayor of London for the Environment and Energy. He leads London’s work on climate action, clean energy, air quality, and climate resilience, which obviously includes the capital’s response to heat risk. So welcome, Mete. This summer’s obviously been really challenging when it comes to extreme heat. Could you talk a little bit about how Londoners have experienced that and what impacts you’ve seen across the city?

Mete: Yeah, I mean, this summer’s heatwaves, like, couldn’t be a more important reminder about the impacts we’re facing around climate change.

I think what’s really scary is the impact it had on the emergency services. So to give your listeners a real context of how disturbing it has been for London, um, the London Fire Brigade had 27,800 calls in the month of July alone, which has been their busiest, uh, ever month. And the, um, London Ambulance Service has had their most busiest summer ever, more than the year of the pandemic.

And actually going back to London Fire Brigade, in two days, over a two-day period, they had 400 related calls related to grass related fires. Um, so it just shows the scale of the problem, uh, that we’re seeing and how it’s stretching our emergency services. If you think about the cost to our transport system, you know, we’re talking, like, millions of pounds, that would’ve been lost to productivity, people are getting around because of the disruptions.

And of course, you know, like, what the Heat Ready London Plan shows, the plan that we launched for London on heat, is that we currently have over a million homes that we identified, uh, that are at risk of overheating. Over 350 care homes at risk of overheating. Over 60 hospitals at risk of overheating, and over 1,300 schools that are at risk of overheating.

And then you think about, you know, if you’ve got a child who goes to school, you know, parents who need to take time off work ’cause they’ve got to be home, it impacts their income. And then you think about frontline workers, like the bus drivers or, you know, nurses and doctors around, around the city. It’s been, um, devastating for a lot of people and, you know, this is the new reality.

Cath: that’s absolutely extraordinary, those numbers on ambulances and fire brigades, like, exceeding COVID. I think, uh, one of the things that I find I think is really challenging in climate resilience work is that it’s, it’s very often the same people who are already experiencing inequalities who are the people who are feeling the worst impacts, even though it does have impacts on everybody and often they are the hardest groups to reach through policy. I was just wondering what you’re doing in London about targeting the people who are most affected.

Mete: Yeah, and look, that’s, I’ll be totally honest as well, like, I’m not someone who is a traditional environmentalist. I think partly the reason why I grew to care about this issue is because I come from a working class community in Hackney, where communities like mine were impacted by, and still are impacted by, you know, volatile energy markets on our dependent on fossil fuels, or the fact that, you know, we disproportionately suffer from bad pollution, uh, for example, historically, uh, and so many children who grew up with stunted lungs.

One of the things that I’m most proud of that we’ve done since I’ve joined City Hall is we launched something called, um, the Youth Climate Summit, really recognizing the fact that a lot of young Londoners, are going to be— This is their city, right? It’s their future of their planet. Uh, and it seems mad that, you know, they don’t have a formal role in policymaking or the ability to kind of really amplify their voice about what they want to see, uh, happen.

And so as part of London Climate Action Week, was, which was the biggest ever London Climate Action Week this year with over 1,300 events, uh, we brought together, uh, young people, uh, from all over London, uh, to really put them at the heart of that conversation. It’s the second year that we’ve run. We’re the first city in the world to do that, uh, working together with a youth-led coalition of organizations.

Last year when we worked with them, it led to the development of the Green Roots Fund. You know, they started, uh, shaping on the, some of the criteria work around that. Um, and so I’m really proud about how we’re centring young people’s, uh, voices. Uh, we’re working with trade union groups, particularly around, uh, air quality.

Um, we’re working with workers more broadly, uh, around the work we’re doing around the heat plan and other areas as well. Um, so, you know, my job is, and the biggest task that the mayor tasked me with when he gave me the job, is to make sure that, you know, whether it’s young people, uh, Londoners from Black and brown communities, uh, working class Londoners, uh, women, all of the groups who tend to be more impacted by climate change, uh, need to have a seat at the table and so that’s something that I’m really focused on.

Cath: Yeah. That, that, that all sounds like really interesting work, and I think one of the things that, uh, is quite often challenging in adaptation policy is it feels like it sits in quite, like, a technocratic space that feels quite far away from people. So I think that kind of stuff is so important. When we’re talking about the impacts of heat, you’ve got these immediate impacts in the emergency response that happens during a heatwave.

Just wondering if you can talk a bit about the kind of longer term impacts, what this is doing to infrastructure, what this does to people’s houses, and, like, how London is preparing for those?

Mete: So we, we launched the heat plan this year, um, and it took a while to develop that, partly because we wanted to make sure that we had the right actions, um, moving forward. Uh, and this builds on the work we’ve done with the London Climate Resilience Review. So when we last had, uh, heatwaves as bad as this was 2022, the mayor asked Emma Howard Boyd, who used to be the chair of the Environment Agency, to really test London and see how, how ready are we to sort of the change in climate, whether it’s, um, extreme heat or flash floods. And that Climate Resilience Review in 2024 showed us that we need to have a wider vision and a plan for, um, extreme heat in the city. And so there are a number of short-term interventions that we’ve put in place, like the core spaces map, water refill points, uh, what we’re doing around, um, you know, creating more shading with street trees, how we’re coordinating some of these agencies like TFL.

We had something called the Operation Helios, over 90 organizations coming together to think about how we respond to extreme heat. But then in the long term, obviously developing this heat plan, what’s really important about it is, is that we actually have some of those more medium and long-term actions as part of it.

Now again, to give your listeners a, a context about how serious this is, if we don’t change course right now, this will cost London’s economy 36 billion pounds a year by 2050 if things carry on the way it is. Um, it has a huge cost, uh, when it comes to, uh, productivity on people being able to work, uh, on our transport system, on our infrastructure, on our schools, on education, on the health system.

You know, we, the health plan is, um, split up into six different sections. So we’ve got what we need to be doing around the built environment and our homes and the public realm, uh, what we’re doing around health and social care, where, where we know there’s, um, serious challenges, uh, what the business and the economy world needs to do, uh, what we’re doing around nature and biodiversity.

So there’s a whole, it’s a very comprehensive plan. We’ve just released the technical analysis, of that plan, uh, and it’s got the sort of the, the data and the science, behind it. Um, the actions are there. What we need to do is now is just the next step is, is really getting partners to really commit to driving forward those actions because the reality is City Hall can only do so much.

Cath: Do you think that the attitudes are shifting on this? I, like, from where I’m sitting, I feel a bit of building momentum. Are you seeing things changing amongst partners and, and also in government around facilitating some of this work?

Mete: Look, I’ll be honest, I think there was a massive, like, positive shift around this in, I’d say, a year or two before the pandemic.

So at 2018, 2019, you would remember the landscape. The political landscape was that there were loads of climate emergencies being declared right across many different councils across the UK, around the world. There was this massive shift towards, like, ESGs, like, international partnerships formulating. Um, and then obviously the pandemic happened.

There was still a lot of, you know, enthusiasm around this. But then, you know, what also happened in 2024 is that we got a climate denier who’s in charge of the most powerful country in the world. Um, and unfortunately, that trickles itself, um, down to lots of different levels, right? You know, other countries stopped becoming as ambitious.

Not necessarily rolling back, but they just stopped treating this as an emergency. Or, you know, like corporate and business worlds, you know, started shifting their priorities. I think we also had this, you know, we live in a world now where there’s so much economic pressures as well, and there’s this question about, you know, growth or green.

And actually, what we’re proving in London is those two things can go hand in hand. It’s about good growth. Um, and I think what we need to do is have almost like reignite that emergency, right? And in some ways, I actually think what we need to do now is what the heat wave show us is, is that this isn’t just some sort of like theoretical thing that may or may not happen.

Here’s a real warning sign about the impacts of climate change. Interestingly to our listeners, um, next year obviously we’ve got the Super El Niño, uh, approaching. Even the most cautious of scientists are predicting that next year’s temperatures, right, could be the equivalent of that of 2037. So we’re already fast-forward literally 10 years because of the impacts of climate change.

And so what we need to do now, Cath, is really is, is to think about how do we… You know, obviously we’ve got a, a duty to protect Londoners, uh, from this, but also we’ve got to bring that energy back into the international space around the cooperation that’s needed. The mayor of London is the co-chair of C40 Cities, which is over 100 cities that work together on climate action.

And, you know, part of what we’re trying to do is to say to nation states, “Look, give cities a seat at the table.” Andy Burnham gets it, um, that’s why he’s been pushing for more devolution. Um, and you know, that’s something that we’re going to be continuing to bang the drum for.

Cath: I think you have asked, uh, one of my key questions, which is, like, what, what is the main thing you would ask the government to do around this? Um, is that around the climate emergency and, and re-emphasizing that, or do you have broad asks on adaptation?

Mete: Look, I think we need to treat the c- climate crisis an emergency, and you know, not just in, in words. Like it needs to really reshape everything. Because- And it’s not just, you know, like I think often sometimes the problem with the climate emergency debate, and I, I’m saying this as someone who used to be an outsider, right?

Right? What used to happen is, is like we talk about this thing, this issue as very separate from like our day- day-to-day lives. If you look at some of the impact that we’re having in London around some of the action that we’re taking, it’s genuinely transforming the lives of Londoners for the better.

Like, regardless of like the kind of the wider net zero ambitions, why wouldn’t you want to live in a city where you’ve got cleaner air quality, where, you know, we’ve seen that now ULEZ, for example, in London, means that children’s lung capacities are growing faster since the introduction of ULEZ. That was a study that came out, um, over a month ago, uh, which showed that.

Why wouldn’t you want to live in a city where you got more access to green space and to help nature flourish across the city, recognizing their, you know, both physical and mental well-beings? Why wouldn’t you want to live in a city where, you know, we don’t have water scarcity or droughts or, you know, we can enjoy our parks and green spaces, or the fact that, you know, you’re, you’re not going to keep paying ridiculous money on energy bills because of wars that you’ve got absolutely no control over and that keeps affecting your day-to-day life as a working class Londoner.

So regardless of the kind of like theoretical debate for a second, these are all the things that we should aspire as part of a country or as neighbourhoods or as cities. And so, you know, for me it’s, it’s like we’ve got to, my plea with, with government or any politician really, and that’s what we’re trying to show here in London is, is that let’s stop treating the climate emergency as this like separate issue to deal with.

This is about, you know, it should be involved in the conversation around housing. How do you improve indoor air quality, energy efficiency? It should be weaved into every single conversation. And I think what we’re showing in London is, you know, a city that has made it work. We can do more, but this is a blueprint for other cities and for the country to take forward.

Cath: Yeah. Well, well thank you. That’s a, I think that’s a pretty powerful ask. So I think that’s all we have time for today. Thank you so much, Mete. Really, really appreciate you joining.

Mete: Thank you, and thanks for the spotlight on London’s work.

Cath: One thing that’s clear from today’s discussion is that extreme heat is becoming an increasingly present reality in the UK. We already have a strong understanding of the risks alongside many of the solutions needed to address them. The challenge now is turning that knowledge into action so that communities are better prepared for the hotter temperatures ahead. Many thanks to Gemma and to Mete today for sharing their insights. And thank you for listening to the Green Alliance Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe and listen to future episodes through your usual podcast app. For more information on our work and the issues discussed today, visit the Green Alliance website.