Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and larvae – which can transmit infections like dengue, chikungunya and Zika virus – have been found breeding in the UK.

on 3 September that the species had been detected at residential properties in east London. This marks the fourth time it has been discovered in the UK in recent years, and the first time it has been found breeding.

The mosquitoes are usually found in more tropical climes. So, is this a result of climate change? How concerned should we be? Here’s what you need to know.

What do we know about A. aegypti?

A. aegypti mosquitoes are native to North Africa, but can be found in tropical and temperate regions around the world, including parts of Europe. Although the species has been seen in the UK before, this is the first time these mosquitoes have been found breeding in the country.

The species can transmit many different pathogens, including the dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika viruses. It commonly feeds at dusk and dawn, indoors and in shady areas.

Where were the mosquitoes found?

According to the UKHSA, the mosquitoes and larvae were found breeding in residential properties in east London. They were spotted and reported under the government’s scheme, which aims to detect the presence of invasive mosquitoes.

The UKHSA said the larvae have been destroyed and promised the area will be monitored closely to eradicate any further mosquitoes and larvae that might emerge.

What is the threat to public health?

The UKHSA insists the threat to public health remains very low. There is no evidence the A. aegypti mosquitoes found in London have transmitted any infections to people, and so far no more mosquitoes or larvae have been found in nearby public areas.

at the University of Oxford said in a statement to the Science Media Centre that the discovery of their presence should be seen as an “early warning rather than an immediate public-health threat”.

It is worth noting that the UK is home to many species of native mosquitoes, but these generally don’t carry serious infections, and are largely an annoyance rather than a public-health threat.

How did they get to the UK?

at the UKHSA said in a statement that the mosquitoes were likely to be “accidental importations”, having “hitchhiked” in vehicles, in suitcases or via imported plants.

Are these mosquitoes here to stay?

The UK has just had its hottest summer on record. London has seen some of the highest temperatures in the country, as heatwaves are usually amplified in cities due to the urban heat island effect.

That may mean the mosquitoes have been able to successfully breed over the summer months this year. But Medlock said the UK’s climate is still too cold overall to enable the mosquitoes to breed over the long term – for now.

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Is this a sign of climate change?

Mosquitoes are expanding their range north as the climate warms. Warmer weather also increases the rate at which viruses replicate in an insect’s body.

That means mosquito-borne viruses are rapidly becoming more common in Europe as the continent warms. In late August, cases of locally transmitted dengue, West Nile and chikungunya viruses across the country, including Paris.

And a published earlier this year found that the Asian tiger mosquito, another invasive mosquito species in Europe, can transmit chikungunya over several months of the year on the continent. The study authors said Europe’s rapid rate of warming was enabling virus transmission to become more widespread across the region.

Over time, the threat of mosquito-borne disease to the British public is also expected to rise. Last year, West Nile virus was detected in the UK for the first time in mosquitoes in Nottinghamshire. For now, authorities hope to keep invasive mosquitoes out of the country for as long as possible to prevent disease transmission.

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What should I do if I am stung by a mosquito?

For most people in the UK, a mosquito bite is an annoyance but nothing to worry about. It will usually produce a red, itchy swelling that will subside within a few days. If you develop a fever or become unwell, and have recently travelled to a location where dengue, chikungunya or Zika is circulating, you should seek medical attention.

How can I prevent mosquitoes breeding in my home?

Scientist say it is important to minimise the chance of mosquitoes breeding in the UK, to try to prevent invasive species gaining a foothold on UK shores. A. aegypti mosquitoes are well adapted to human environments and can breed in small quantities of standing water, so the most important action people can take is to eliminate, as far as possible, any standing water around the home. That could include emptying water trays under houseplants, clearing rainfall from containers, keeping lids on rain barrels, washing out pet bowls and flower vases regularly and keeping shower areas as clean and dry as possible between use.

If you spot a mosquito in the UK, you can report it to the scheme.

The UK’s dry, hot and sunny summer has provisionally entered the record books as the hottest season for the country since records began in 1884.

The average temperature for the months of June, July and August was 16.5°C (61.7°F), the national weather service, the Met Office, said on 1 September, blowing through the previous summer record of 16.1°C (61°F)  set just last year.

“The conditions we’ve seen this summer have broken UK climate records once again,” said at the Met Office in a statement.

Summer in the UK began with the second warmest June on record, followed by the second-warmest July. But the heat remained almost constant throughout the three-month period, with 38°C (100.4°F) recorded for the first time in June in Norfolk, and 38.1°C (100.6°F) recorded at Kew Gardens in London on 13 August.

Much of England is now in the grip of a severe drought after rainfall vanished from many parts of the country during July. The hot, dry conditions have damaged crops, strained healthcare systems and triggered severe wildfires.

Fossil fuel emissions fuelled the high temperatures, with climate change making a summer like 2026 around 130 times more likely to occur, the Met Office said.

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“In a climate unaffected by human emissions of greenhouse gases, a summer like this would be exceptionally unlikely, i.e. 1 in over 1,000 years,” at the Met Office said in a statement. “In our current climate, which is changing because of the effect of burning of fossil fuels, we should now expect this to be roughly a 1 in 9 year event.”

The top five warmest summers for the UK have all occurred since 2003. This trend will only intensify in the future as rising global temperatures cause summers in the UK to be increasingly hot and dry. Under 4°C of warming, the summer just gone would be considered cool or below average for the UK, the Met Office said.

In response to the announcement, at the World Wildlife Fund said in a statement: “These stark figures prove what we have been experiencing first hand, we are getting hotter and hotter. And the climate will continue to heat up until we cut our emissions to net zero.”

A super El Niño that is gathering strength in the Pacific Ocean may have been made worse by climate change, according to new analysis of coral records that suggest El Niños have become more intense as global temperatures have climbed.

The impacts of El Niño – droughts, floods and storms – are already exacerbated by rising global temperatures, because a warmer atmosphere intensifies both rainfall and droughts.

But scientists have long struggled to untangle the effect of climate change on the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, which drives El Niño events. Part of the difficulty is that detailed observational records only began in the 1980s. A much longer timescale than that is needed to tease out a trend from natural variability.

at the University of Michigan and her colleagues hope corals can provide the answer. They collected living and dead corals from around the Galapagos Islands in the eastern Pacific ocean, where El Niños first develop.

They used uranium and thorium dating to identify the age of the corals, then analysed the chemistry of their skeletons to track changes to sea temperatures during their lifetime. In that way, they built a time series of sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific spanning the past 1000 years.

El Niño and La Niña events are measured by changes to sea surface temperatures in the Pacific, so by building this time series, Cole and her colleagues could track the fluctuating ENSO cycle through the centuries.

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“The chemistry of the coral skeleton preserves a record of the environment in which it grew, and certain aspects of the chemistry are especially sensitive to temperature changes,” says Cole.

The team found that, over the past 40 years, variability in the ENSO cycle has increased by 36.5 per cent compared with the pre-industrial period. This increase in variability has been driven largely by more intense El Niño events, the analysis found.

The corals collected by the team covered about half the 1000-year time period. Nevertheless, Cole is confident in the overall trend identified. “I think we show pretty clearly that the increase in variability in ENSO is tracking global temperature closely,” she says.

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The findings add to an that suggests the ENSO cycle is changing in response to rising temperatures. “The evidence is better than 50-50 that climate change is affecting El Niño,” says at Columbia University in New York, used tree ring data to identify an increase in El Niño activity in recent years.

Although the research does not include the recent El Niños in 2015, 2023 and 2026, Cole says they are consistent with the trend identified by the corals. When the current El Niño peaks at the end of this year, sea surface temperatures in the east-central Pacific Ocean are projected to reach 4°C above normal, a 60 per cent increase over the old record.

at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) agrees. “If the current El Niño turns out to be as strong as we expect, that past decade will have witnessed three major El Niños – a sequence not seen before in the instrumental record dating back to the late 19th century,” he says. “It will add to the mounting evidence that climate change is amplifying the ENSO cycle… which is a concern considering the far-reaching global impacts that ENSO has on humans and natural systems.”

Winter has traditionally been the most deadly season in the UK. But that is changing, thanks to searing summer heatwaves, with the number of heat-related deaths in England and Wales each year now rivalling deaths from cold weather.

Across England and Wales, just over 40,000 more people died on the hottest days between 1988 and 2025 than would be expected under normal temperatures, new figures released today by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.

By comparison, across the 37-year period, almost 139,000 deaths were associated with the coldest days.

But as summer temperatures rise, the number of heat-related and cold-related deaths each year is starting to converge, the ONS said.

In 1992, hot weather was associated with the deaths of 722 people, compared to 3412 deaths for cold weather. By 2023, hot weather was linked to 2234 deaths in England and Wales, with cold weather during the same year linked to 3294 deaths.

The ONS estimated deaths associated with the coldest 2.5 per cent and hottest 2.5 per cent of days between 1988 and 2025, accounting for other factors such as air pollution.

A series of hot summers, fuelled by a warming climate, has driven the trend in rising heat deaths. All five of the UK’s warmest summers on record have occurred since 2000, with 2022 being the first summer to record a 40°C day in the UK. Deaths associated with hot weather have been rising since 2011.

The ONS data didn’t include 2026 in its assessment, but prolonged high temperatures and successive heatwaves mean England is widely expected to log a record number of heat-related deaths this summer. In July, the UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said heatwaves in May and June 2026 had caused 2877 heat-associated deaths in England, almost double the entire 2025 total. That is also higher than the total number of deaths associated with cold weather in England during winter 2024-25, which the UKHSA has at 2544, raising the possibility that heat-related deaths in 2026 could outstrip cold-related deaths for the first time on record.

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Summer heat is “now killing almost as many people as winter cold each year in England and Wales,” said at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London in a statement. “The deaths during the record heat of summer 2026 may be higher than the mortality we experienced last winter.”

 at the University of Surrey says the gap between hot weather deaths and cold weather deaths is “narrowing a lot quicker than anyone anticipated it would”. Without action to help people better cope with high temperatures, we will see “high and rapid growth” in the number of hot weather deaths in the UK over the coming years, he warns.

Climate change is expected to bring even hotter, drier summers to the UK, further increasing the public health risk. Already, more than half of UK homes are at risk of overheating during hot weather – that is projected to rise to 92 per cent by 2050, according to the UK’s Climate Change Committee.

at Warwick University, UK, says factors such as age, chronic disease, social isolation and housing conditions all determine how vulnerable a person is to extreme heat. “Whether deaths from heat will ultimately exceed deaths from cold is still unclear, yet that may not even be the most relevant question,” she says. “The more urgent concern is that heat-related mortality is rising, and many of these deaths could be avoided. How far this pattern persists will depend not just on future warming, but also on how well we adjust our homes, communities, health systems, and cities to a hotter climate.”

Planes flying across the North Atlantic Ocean later this year will be re-routed to avoid causing condensation trails, in a first-of-a-kind trial to address the global warming impact of contrails across an entire airspace.

Starting in November, air traffic controllers managing the Shanwick airspace on the eastern side of the North Atlantic will advise planes to adjust their altitude to avoid creating fresh contrails. The controllers will be using AI-generated forecasts of atmospheric conditions from Google that predict where contrails will form.

“We can predict the regions that are going to form persistent climate-warming contrails, and we can re-route planes around them,” at Contrails.org, a research organisation that is participating in the project, said during a press briefing on 17 August.

Contrails are formed when soot particles emitted by jet engines trigger the formation of ice particles, leaving a condensation trail that can last for hours. During the day, these persistent contrails help to reflect solar radiation back to space, which has a cooling effect. But they also trap heat below them, causing warming. Overall, contrails are thought to account for around one-third of aviation’s climate impact.

The Shanwick airspace is a contrail hotspot and a busy area for planes crossing the North Atlantic. suggests the airspace is responsible for about 5 per cent of global contrail warming, and most of this effect occurs during the winter season between November and February.

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The £5 million Operation Blue Skies project will re-route flights in the evening and night, which have the biggest warming effect. Pilots entering the Shanwick airspace will be instructed to adjust their altitude by up to 2000 feet (600 metres) to avoid atmospheric conditions where contrail formation is likely. The advice will be issued under the same procedures already used by air traffic controllers to help pilots avoid turbulence or other weather conditions.

The trial will run during two four-month winter trials over 2026-2027 and 2027-2028, with approximately 20 to 40 test days during each winter season. Around 10,000 flights are expected to pass through the airspace during trial hours each year, and hundreds will need to be re-routed to produce a statistically significant data set for analysis. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London will analyse the data from the trial.

The climate benefit of avoiding contrails is worth any extra fuel burn from shifting flight paths, at Google UK said during the briefing. Re-routed flights may have to burn an additional 100 kilograms of fuel per aircraft while crossing the airspace, resulting in an additional few hundred kilograms of CO2 emitted. By comparison, “the contrail impact on those flights, especially at those times of day, is measured in the tonnes or even the tens of tonnes”, he said.

The project follows previous trials of Google’s AI contrail forecasts, which have been used to inform airlines’ flight plans before take-off and routes set by air traffic dispatchers. This work suggests re-routing a plane can cut contrail formation by 50 to 60 per cent.

But this is the first time contrail forecasts will be used across an entire airspace, and airlines will not be able to opt out. “This is what we call an airspace-scale trial, where deviations will effectively be instructed from the air traffic controller and affect all of the aircraft that are flying in this particular region,” said Hodgson.

Water levels on the river Thames in London have dropped low enough to allow the production of drinking water from mainland Britain’s only desalination plant – but it is currently out of service.

The £250 million Thames Gateway desalination plant in Beckton, east London, and remains mainland Britain’s only large-scale desalination plant. It was designed to provide additional drinking water to the capital during times of severe drought by turning brackish water from the Thames into potable water.

But despite the UK recording its driest July since records began in 1836 and suffering what government officials have described as an “exceptionally serious” drought, the plant has not been used at all this year.

Under , the firm is allowed to start using its desalination plant if a drought is declared and if water flow rates in the Thames drop below 3000 megalitres per day (Ml/d).

A drought was declared in England on 29 July 2026, and data obtained by 91av suggests water flow rates at Teddington in south-west London, the lowest point of the freshwater Thames, have been well below the 3000 Ml/d mark for weeks.

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In fact, the current rates are around 220 Ml/d, below even the target river flow threshold for Teddington of 300 Ml/d during the current drought. Normally, the target flow rate for the river is 800 Ml/d, to protect the river’s ecology and surrounding environment from over-abstraction by Thames Water.

Under normal circumstances, the current situation would allow Thames Water to start producing drinking water from the Beckton plant, to relieve pressure on other water sources. The Thames Gateway plant is capable of providing up to 100 Ml/d of water, about 4 per cent of the daily volume of drinking water supplied by Thames Water.

But the desalination plant has been beset with technical problems and is currently out of supply, according to Thames Water. Its 2027 draft drought plan published earlier this year reports that work is under way to replace damaged equipment, including the plant’s membranes, which act as filters for fresh water.

The plant has only ever run five times, , delivering the equivalent of seven days’ worth of drinking water supplies to London. It has not been used at all this year, despite the worsening drought. Thames Water’s drought plan suggests the plant would take four to six weeks to ramp up to full capacity.

A spokesperson for Thames Water said the firm was working to ready the plant for operations later this year. They said in a statement: “Preparations are under way at the Thames Gateway Water Treatment Works in Beckton East London so it can be brought online by the end of the year, if needed, to help support reservoir recovery over the winter. Any decision to use the desalination plant will depend on weather conditions, demand, and reservoir levels in the coming weeks.”

Data released by the Environment Agency this month confirmed that July 2026 was the driest July for the Thames area since records began in 1871, with the region receiving just 1 millimetre of rainfall for the entire month. Parts of the river Thames are suffering exceptionally low flows, which can lead to low oxygen levels and deteriorating river health.

The problems at the Beckton desalination plant come as other water companies look to build desalination plants across England, in a bid to shore up water supplies as climate change brings more frequent and intense droughts to the country.

Anglian Water is developing plans for two plants in Norfolk and Lincolnshire, using seawater from the North Sea. Meanwhile, South West Water is also drawing up plans for a desalination plant in Par, Cornwall, to help the county cope with the increased water demands during the busy summer months.

Summer 2026 is likely to be the warmest on record in the UK, with repeated searing heatwaves and a severe drought affecting much of the country. In southern England in particular, the landscape is parched and crispy, rivers and reservoirs are running low, and trees are shedding their leaves in a stress response to the dry weather. Much of Europe is baking under similar conditions.

How much longer can we cope without rain? And how long will it take us to recover from such an unprecedented dry spell? With the help of experts from across water, agriculture and climate, we’ve answered your key questions below.

How bad is the drought?

Almost three-quarters of England is now in drought conditions after the driest July in almost two centuries, when barely any rain fell in many places. The National Drought Group – which includes public bodies, agricultural and environmental organisations – has described the situation as an “exceptionally serious” flash drought, driven by a combination of very high temperatures and exceptionally low rainfall over recent weeks.

It is taking a severe toll on the landscape. Almost 250 wildfires have been reported in biodiversity hotspots this year, wetlands and peatlands are drying out, and trees are dying. Some 22 per cent of rivers are at exceptionally low levels, including the Avon, Wye, Ely Ouse and Exe.

“The almost completely dry July is exceptionally unusual and add to that the heatwaves, the soils have dried very quickly and river flows have dropped very fast,” says at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

How short of water are we?

The dry, hot weather over July and August has rapidly depleted rivers, reservoirs and underground aquifers, despite the wet winter England just experienced. Reservoir levels in England have fallen to 69 per cent – 11.6 per cent lower than what would be expected for this time of year. Reservoir storage in the country fell 16 per cent in July, the greatest reduction in raw storage for at least 30 years, the UK government said this week.

It is a sign of the impact of climate change, which is expected to bring drier, hotter summers to the UK. This year shows that even a wet winter isn’t enough to carry the UK through an extremely hot, dry summer. “Currently the situation is that we’re just simply using too much water,” says at the University of Oxford. “We’re not replenishing at the same speed as we’re using water.”

But great progress has been made in improving water storage, infrastructure and the industry’s response to drought in recent years, says at the Open University. This means the water industry is better equipped to deal with drought than it was in 1976, even though the weather has been hotter and drier for a longer period than 50 years ago. “It’s more severe than 1976 in terms of heatwaves and repetition of heatwaves, but the status of the water-supply system is currently not as bad as it was in 1976,” he says.

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How are trees, plants and wildlife coping?

You may have noticed the crunch of dry leaves underfoot in recent weeks. That’s a sign stressed trees are going through a “false autumn”, where they shed their leaves and even branches in an effort to keep their main stem alive. Some will not make it through – the 2022 heatwave killed 400 trees at Kew Gardens in London. Younger trees are at greater risk, as newly planted trees need 50 litres of water per week during the summer months for the first three years after planting.

Meanwhile, low river levels are causing algal blooms in rivers, and hard, dry soils make it impossible for animals such as badgers and hedgehogs to dig for food. Fierce wildfires have swept through nature reserves, destroying habitats and killing wildlife.

Unfortunately, this is the third drought in five years for England, and ecosystems are already stressed and weakened by these previous events. That makes it more difficult for them to recover from this extreme summer.

When will it next rain?

The intense heat of this week will give way to cooler temperatures next week, according to the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service. Although temperatures are expected to be closer to average for this time of year, whether rain will fall in the areas under the most stress is far from certain. Forecasters have struggled this year to accurately forecast rain, with wet weather often failing to materialise.

Even if rain showers do arrive next week, it is unlikely to be enough to alleviate the drought, in a blog post this week. There’s also the not insignificant risk of a dry, hot September, with long-term forecasts currently favouring drier weather.

What happens if there’s no rain the next few weeks?

Water companies will prioritise maintaining household water supplies above all else, but other sectors, such as agriculture or commercial businesses, are likely to face increasingly tight restrictions over the coming weeks if the drought continues.

Hosepipe bans – known as temporary use bans – are already in place across much of the country and can reduce consumption by 5 to 10 per cent. At least one water company – Southern Water – has applied to the government for a drought order. That would give it powers to introduce a non-essential use ban that restricts certain commercial activities such as car washing, window cleaning and watering commercial premises. Other water companies have signalled they will follow suit if the situation doesn’t improve in the next few weeks. Water companies can also apply to take more water from rivers and aquifers to maintain supply, but this threatens wildlife and habitats.

The next step up is an emergency drought order, which needs to be approved by the environment secretary. This would allow water companies to impose rota cuts on household and commercial customers, as happened in 1976 when mains water to households was curtailed and standpipes were installed in streets.

However, this is highly unlikely to happen this year, says Collins, as water companies would deploy all other possible measures first. “Public water supply is always the priority, no matter what happens,” he says.

Is there a threat to food supply?

Farmers are already warning that yields of some crops will be significantly lower than normal this summer because of the drought. Wheat yields are expected to be down 14 per cent compared with the average, and potato yields are expected to be 10 to 15 per cent lower than average. Meanwhile, harvests of fruits such as apples are also expected to be lower than usual, and the fruit smaller in size. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a think tank, it could be the worst harvest on record for UK farmers, with drought-related yield losses potentially costing arable farmers £390 million in lost revenue.

The situation is made worse by the fact that much of Europe is also sweltering under hot, dry conditions, meaning food production across the continent is also likely to fall this year. Together, that is likely to push food prices up for consumers into the autumn, particularly for fruit.

Farmers in England are struggling to adapt to heat and drought extremes because the weather is still so changeable, says at Rothamsted Research. “We’re not like the Mediterranean, where you get predictably hot, dry summers every year,” he says. Paul’s research is focused on breeding crops and developing treatments to boost yields in both wet and dry conditions. “The solution isn’t to breed drought-tolerant crops that only do well under droughts,” he says.

What could water companies be doing to save water?

Over the longer term, England needs to get better at storing water from its wet winters to tide it over during the summer months. This means building new reservoirs – a costly, time-consuming endeavour – and expanding water-transfer schemes to transport water from wet regions to dry ones. Even more radical plans are being explored, from building desalination plants to artificially injecting more water into underground aquifers during winter months.

The Environment Agency predicts there could be a shortfall of 5 billion litres per day in water supply across England by 2050 if more isn’t done to limit demand and increase supply.

How long will it take for the drought to end?

In the eyes of the public, a few days of rain is enough for the drought to be over. But it takes landscapes and wildlife far longer to recover from such an extreme dry spell. The flash drought that developed last year across England only ended in autumn when weeks of above-average rainfall arrived.

Hydrologists will be watching closely for a wet autumn and winter this year, which will help to recharge rivers and groundwater ahead of next summer. A strong El Niño now underway in the Pacific Ocean could increase the chances of a wetter start to winter for the UK, although El Niño’s influence on UK weather is indirect and difficult to predict.

However, a dry winter could leave the UK vulnerable. “A dry winter would make us worried about next spring and summer,” says Watts. That would put the country in a vulnerable position and raise the threat of emergency drought orders being introduced.