Extreme heat is becoming a significant concern to the United Kingdom (UK) with a lack of urgency when it comes to preparedness. The UK experienced five heatwave periods in summer 2022 with record-breaking temperatures of over 40ºC in England, leading to almost 3,000 deaths. The extreme heat experienced was a 1-in-1,000-year event, made 10 times more likely by anthropogenic climate change. Yet, the record-breaking temperatures of 2022 could be considered an average year by 2060 and a cool year by 2100. Thus, while heat is a relatively new risk for the UK, it is becoming an increasingly stark reality with over 50,000 heat-related deaths recorded between 1988 and 2022. There is a deeper, more pressing issue, which is to consider how efforts to design adaptation to extreme heat will not hinder progress on mitigation by further increasing greenhouse gas emissions. For example, use of air conditioning may be the only viable adaptation to keep people cool in the UK where the building stock is not designed to keep people cool in the summer. This could increase energy usage, sitting at odds with efforts to reduce energy consumption and undermining efforts to achieve the UK’s net zero target. Thus, there is now a great need to consider adaptation and mitigation as complementary activities and to understand how the public perceives this. This presentation will share insights from two case studies exploring this. The first is a survey on public perceptions to extreme heat conducted in August 2023 with 1,750 respondents from a representative sample of the UK population. In this first case study, we explore the extent to which the UK public are aware of the impacts of extreme heat and whether approaches to reduce the effects of extreme heat can occur without increasing emissions. The second case study seeks to understand how action on adaptation and mitigation efforts can be combined to adopt a ‘climate-resilient net zero’ approach to tackling extreme heat in London. In this second case study, we explore the practicalities around incorporating climate adaptation to extreme heat into emergency response and planning, and seek to understand the experiences of those responding to emergency situations during periods of extreme heat.
Insights from these two research projects exploring how to manage the impacts of extreme heat whilst minimising greenhouse gas emissions have significant potential to inform policy and decision-making, emergency responses and effective communication and public engagement.