Wet winter, hot summer? What ‘climate whiplash’ means for the UK
After a dry 2025 with the UK’s warmest summer on record, winter 2026 delivered something very different: rain for 50 days in a row in parts of Devon and Cornwall, one of the rainiest seasons on record and only 80% of average sunshine.
Scientists have given this a name: climate whiplash.
Climate whiplash describes rapid swings from one type of weather extreme to another, most commonly from really persistent drought to really persistent wet weather. Globally, such swings have increased in recent decades. Shorter-term whiplashes over a few months have become roughly a third to two-thirds more frequent, while year-to-year swings have increased by up to a third.
In Europe and the UK these swings tend to be driven by the jet stream, a fast-moving body of air higher up in the atmosphere. This winter, it was sat across the south of the UK and moved fast, blowing wet and windy weather from the northern Atlantic.
Weather often moves in “systems” – large rotating masses of similar air – and these systems effectively bump into one another like billiard balls. This winter, however, a large block of settled weather stayed in place across Europe. This acted like a barrier, causing the wet weather carried by the jet stream to slow down across the UK.
Will the UK whiplash back into drought?
Predicting what the UK’s summer will look like months in advance is challenging. Seasonal forecasting does exist, but it can’t tell us if it will rain on a particular day in July. What it can do is estimate the likelihood of certain weather trends – such as hotter or drier conditions – developing over the course of a season.
These forecasts are getting better. Under certain conditions, by May, scientists can now anticipate an increased risk of heat extremes in Europe that summer. Other research suggests that combined heat and drought extremes can sometimes be forecast one to two months ahead.
Early indications for summer 2026 suggest that the UK will probably experience slightly drier than average conditions in early summer, with an added risk of extreme heat. That does not make a hot, dry summer inevitable. But it would be consistent with climate whiplash.
More broadly, climate projections suggest that the UK and much of Europe are likely to experience more of these “flipflop” weather patterns – persistent dry spells followed by months of downpours, or vice versa – as the world warms. Although a wet winter does not automatically lead to a dry summer, the jet stream is a key driver in all of our weather throughout the year.
Why this matters
Policy is still largely designed around averages, yet the weather is behaving less and less like an average year. If the UK is heading for an era of sharper swings between flood and drought, policymaking and adaptation systems will need to catch up.
Take housing and insurance, for example. Flood Re, the government’s reinsurance scheme that keeps flood cover affordable, is only eligible for houses built before January 2009. Since then, more than 100,000 new homes have been built-in high-risk flood areas – homes that may face rising premiums just as extreme rainfall increases.
Read more: How the UK is keeping flood insurance affordable – until 2039
In addition, we know that 80% of houses in the UK overheat in the summer. Many properties will be doubly vulnerable: too wet in winter, too hot in summer.
Climate whiplash also threatens food security. Fields can be waterlogged when planting yet too dry and dusty as crops approach harvest, lowering the yields that are produced. Transport networks are similarly exposed: some rail lines were submerged during winter floods, only a few months after a summer drought caused lines nearby to buckle as the underlying soil dried up.
These events are signs of systems – from insurance to infrastructure – being tested by weather swinging between extremes harder and faster than ever.
The UK prepares for these risks through a process set out by the 2008 Climate Change Act, which requires regular assessments of how climate change will affect the country. Every five years the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee produces a risk assessment which the government must respond to.
The next assessment, due later in 2026, will land after a year of extremes. If the UK is indeed entering its whiplash era, the question is whether adaptation plans will keep up.
Chloe Brimicombe receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council. She is also a heat ambassador for the charity Shade the UK.