2026 – The coolest summer we will experience

The summer we are experiencing has been like no other. May 2026 had the hottest days ever recorded in history –  24 May recorded 34.8°C and  25 May 35.1°C. We had the hottest June day ever recorded – on  26 June, temperatures reached 38.0°C. By early August, 20 days of the year exceeded 32.0°C. If we do nothing, 2026 could be the coolest summer we have going forward.  

Ultimately, these are just numbers. Whilst a lot of us have felt discomfort due to the heat, to truly understand the dangers of these events, you should listen to the pleas of firefighters like James Rodgers, who are confronted by climate change in more extreme and regular ways than any of us. Speaking in parliament this year, James said: "Everyone who works in the fire brigade is feeling the exhaustion. We expect the fires, we expect the floods, we expect the road traffic collisions. What we didn’t expect was for the extreme heat itself to become the emergency."

Hot weather has disrupted my travel to and from the office, with rail services frequently affected and cancelled. Working from home became equally challenging, as temperatures in my workspace reached 38°C, making it difficult to concentrate as both the room and my laptop generated additional heat and discomfort. The heat also affected my sleep, leaving me tired during the day and limiting my ability to stay active or find cooler places to spend time. My children’s school was forced to close early because classrooms became too hot, yet another example of how existing buildings are struggling to cope with rising temperatures and how learning, as well as workplace productivity, can be affected.

Several people have suffered from heat stress or even heat related fatalities. The Met Office recorded more than 2,700 excess deaths in England and Wales during the May and June heatwaves. Heat-related mortality does not affect everyone equally: age, health conditions, housing quality, access to cooling, and social isolation can all increase vulnerability.

Recently a lot of buildings are said to be no long fit for purpose to manage heat by multiple groups. The archetypes of design were set with different climate understandings.  They were expected to keep people warm in winter, not necessarily safe and comfortable during repeated heatwaves. Buildings should protect people from external conditions, but in extreme heat some are now intensifying risk instead.  

We need to acknowledge that buildings also suffer in heat, cracks appear in walls, metal details start to buckle, pipes underground crack impacting drainage systems. Dry ground can also reduce drainage capacity, increasing the risk that systems will be overwhelmed when heavy rain follows prolonged heat.  

There has also been a rise in communities raising awareness and action by watching the national emergency planning briefings. My mum, for instance, attended her local church for a national climate energency briefing, which bring together communities to educate one another on experiencing hazards. Community engagement is the cornerstone to protecting people – particularly vulnerable people – from climate related hazards. We know that heatwaves are going to increase to more than 4-6 times a year, and we also know that this is a global problem. Industry, government, and communities need to act now: retrofit vulnerable buildings, strengthen local emergency planning, improve cooling strategies, and design infrastructure for the climate conditions already emerging.

In practice, we know that we can develop responses to invest in adaptation measures by understanding disaster risk reduction and increasing community resilience. We need to consider prevention and reduction because ultimately, this costs everyone and leads to unseen issues becoming suddenly real - Why do we have to wait for adaptation to get even more expensive?  

In a recent UN report it states “Among all developing countries, 85 countries (55% of nations) had specified their adaptation finance needs for 2021–2030 in at least one of their Nationally Determined Contribution or National Adaptation Plan submissions as at 31 July 2023. After excluding double counting, these submissions total US$105 billion per year for 2021–2030 (in 2021 prices). This amount is equivalent to 1.5 per cent of these countries’ GDP”. In other words, funds to assist have to come from the global finance, and if we don’t invest in adaptation ourselves, we compound the expense on others, and we can actually do things differently to reduce these future costs and retrofit the UK to cope with increasing stresses. So why do we have to wait for adaptations to get even more expensive?

The question is no longer whether we can afford to adapt, but whether we can afford not to. Every heatwave, infrastructure failure, school closure and preventable death is a reminder that climate change is not a future risk, it is a present reality. The costs of adaptation will continue to rise the longer we delay, while the consequences of inaction are already being felt in our homes, workplaces and communities.

As engineers, we are custodians of public safety. We have a responsibility to protect future generations by designing and adapting the built environment for the climate risks ahead. Accountability starts with the decisions we make now. The buildings, infrastructure and communities we create today will determine how well society copes with the extremes of tomorrow. Waiting for the next record-breaking summer is not a strategy. Action is. And if 2026 has shown us anything, it is that the window to prepare is closing faster than we think.