Climate crisis: Carlisle records hottest ever year in 2023

Carlisle was one of nearly a third of all places in the UK that last year experienced its hottest average temperature since local records began, according to UK charity Carbon Copy and climate scientists at the University of Reading.

Using data from the Met Office, the organisations have just released the latest update to the local climate warming stripes – the area-specific graphics showing the reality of our heating planet where we live. 

First published last year, the local versions of the stripes cover all 379 primary council areas in the UK. The graphics show a stripe for each year from the late 1800s to the present day. Where stripes are blue, the year represented is cooler than average, where they are white, the temperature is roughly average - and the red stripes are those that are warmer than average.

The 2023 update for Carlisle builds on the red-hot pattern of ever warmer years and is a stark contrast to the mainly blue stripes representing pre-industrial years. 

Carbon Copy’s Isabelle Sparrow explains: "ou may have heard the news stories recently highlighting that last year, for the first time ever, the global average temperature stayed consistently 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The trouble is that global figures are hard to relate to, and 1.5 degrees could seem insignificant to many people.

"What we see with the local warming stripes, is that this is not an ‘over there’ problem – people in communities across the UK are experiencing unprecedented temperatures right here, right now."

Carlisle's temperature changes since 1884 (Image: Carbon Copy)

Climate scientist Professor Ed Hawkins added: "It might seem odd to talk about global heating when we are just coming out of a winter of storms and floods, but all these extreme weather events are interlinked. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water, which in turn creates more rainfall.

"It’s no coincidence that temperature records and precipitation records are getting broken left, right and centre: it’s all connected, and it all relates to the ongoing release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.”