As the UK’s summer heatwave continues, social media posts wrongly claim a day in June saw the highest temperature recorded in the UK since 1976, and suggest this is evidence that global warming isn’t real.
But a Met Office spokesperson said this is “fundamentally incorrect”.
Posts shared on both X and Facebook on 26 June say: “Today is the hottest day in the UK since 1976. That means 50 years ago it was still just as hot as it is today. Global Warming is a lie.”
The temperature on 26 June 2026 actually broke the record temperature for June set in 1976. It was not the hottest day recorded in the UK since then. The record for the hottest day in England, and the UK, is 40.3°C on 19 July 2022 in Coningsby, Lincolnshire.
According to the Met Office, the provisional temperature on 26 June was 37.7°C in Lingwood, Norfolk, setting a new record for the hottest day in June. This beat the previous June record of 35.6°C in Southampton in 1976 (which itself equalled a previous record of 35.6°C set in Camden Square, London, in 1957). The highest temperature recorded during the heatwave of 1976 was 35.9°C in Cheltenham on 3 July.
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Global warming
A spokesperson for the Met Office said that a comparison of two individual days in 2026 and 1976 is not evidence that global warming isn’t real.
They told Reuters: “It’s important to note that observing climate change in action is a much broader picture than just comparing the data on two individual days. What’s clear is the trend that we’re observing over a much longer period, with more frequent and intense heatwaves and a trend for warmer weather in general.
“So, the post text is fundamentally incorrect, the maximum temperature recorded in this heatwave was higher than that in June 1976. Usually, records are surpassed by fractions of a degree, not this sort of margin.”
Four of the last five years are in the UK’s top-five warmest years by mean temperature since the series began in 1884. Speaking in January 2026, after 2025 was confirmed as the hottest year in the UK on record, the Met Office’s head of climate attribution Dr Mark McCarthy said: “Although it doesn’t mean every year will be the warmest on record, it is clear from our weather observations and climate models that human-induced global warming is impacting the UK’s climate.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it is “unequivocal” that human influence has warmed the atmosphere.
You can find more of our work debunking claims relating to the climate and environment here.
