Helena Horton

So there is an El Nino coming up at the end of the year.

It's a weather phenomenon that's caused by the Pacific Ocean heating.

And then that changes the jet stream in the way that it impacts weather events.

So it turbocharges heat waves and sometimes other things like rainfall or drought.

We've only had temperatures over 30 degrees in May, eight times since the early 1900s.

Every year we're experiencing record breaking heat pretty much.

It's accelerating.

I'm sure you probably remember when we were younger, it would be extremely rare to have 30 degree days even in August.

And now we're having them earlier and earlier.

And now for the first time, we're about to hit 35 in May today, according to the Met Office.

And that's a staggering 2.2 degrees Celsius above the record.

And normally records are only beaten by a fraction of a degree.

Right.

So to beat it by two degrees, which looks like it's going to happen today, it's already getting really hot, is absolutely unprecedented.

And forecasters are very surprised that it's happening.

It's pretty high.

I mean, I've seen some Americans online commenting saying, oh, it's only 30 degrees Celsius.

We have that every day.

The difference is our homes aren't built for these temperatures.

They're built of brick a lot of the time.