Thousands of fish are killed by the warmest June on record as they ‘boil’ in temperatures hotter than 1976 – with climate change to blame
- Met Office said yesterday the average temperature for June this year hit 15.8C
- This is 0.9C hotter than the joint previous record of 14.9C in 1940 and 1976
The hottest June on record has caused the deaths of thousands of fish, with climate change to blame.
The Met Office said yesterday the average temperature for June this year hit 15.8C. This is 0.9C hotter than the joint previous record of 14.9C in 1940 and 1976, according to the forecaster’s provisional figures.
In total, 72 counties saw the hottest June since records began in 1884.
The Royal Horticultural Society warned some plants have ‘boiled’ as their roots have been left in water while they were being planted.
Mark Owen, head of fisheries at the Angling Trust, said the heat had killed thousands of fish.
Mark Owen, head of fisheries at the Angling Trust, said the heat had killed thousands of fish (file image)
He added: ‘Where I was this morning on a canal near Birmingham, fish were caught up against a lock and you saw hundreds of seagulls picking up the dead fish, the stench was really quite amazing.’
Dr Andy Bray, of the Calder Rivers Trust, said: ‘We’ve got rivers that don’t have any shade, that are straight and that are impounded so there is very little flow.
‘It’s just kind of a backlog for them to just be heated up in. This is a problem that’s going to be happening year on year as we go forward.’
John Ellis, of the Canal and River Trust, added: ‘We’ve had more than 60 fish mortality incidents on 21 different canals up and down the UK and to put that into perspective, a typical year we may see half a dozen.’
He told the BBC this was partly due to high water temperatures and thunderstorms reducing oxygen in the water.
Paul Davies, Met Office chief meteorologist, said ‘background warming of the Earth’s atmosphere due to human-induced climate change has driven up the possibility of reaching record high temperatures’.
By the 2050s, record June heat may be expected ‘every other year’, he said.
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