A hypothetical UK weather forecast for 2050 set to come true next week

The UK temperatures are forecast to run 10 to 15 degrees warmer than normal early next week making a past weather warning for 2050 prove true but just 28 years early.

In 2020,  forecasters in the UK conducted an interesting thought experiment about what the forecasts will look like in 2050?

According to a CNN report, meteorologists at the UK Met Office -- the official weather forecast agency for the UK -- dove in to the super long-range climate models in the summer of 2020 to see what kind of temperatures they'd be forecasting in about three decades.

Simon Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University in New York, noted the striking similarity between the 2050 outlook and the forecast for early next week in the UK.

"Today, the forecast for Tuesday is shockingly almost identical for large parts of the country," Simon tweeted, adding in a later post that "what is coming on Tuesday gives an insight into the future."

"Not actual weather forecast," the Met Office's graphics said. "Examples of plausible weather based on climate projections."

Highs could approach 40 degrees Celsius (around 104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the UK for the first time -- a prediction that prompted meteorologists there to issue a "red" heat warning for the first time ever.

This is going to be a truly record-breaking heat as the country's hottest temperature ever measured was 38.7 degrees Celsius at the Cambridge Botanic Garden in 2019.

"We hoped we wouldn't get to this situation," the Met Office's climate attribution scientist Nikos Christidis said in a statement. "Climate change has already influenced the likelihood of temperature extremes in the UK. The chances of seeing 40°C days in the UK could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence."

The chance of exceeding 40 degrees is "increasing rapidly," Christidis said.

In 30 years, this forecast is going to seem rather typical. It's also clearly a sign of how rapidly the climate crisis is altering our weather.