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On July 19, 2022, the UK experienced a taste of the weather to come. Temperatures reached 40.3° Celsius—soaring past the previous record by more than one-and-a-half degrees.
Dozens of homes in east London were destroyed by fires, while elsewhere in the country, the heat pushed the power grid close to the point of failure. The Office for National Statistics estimates that there were more than 2,800 excess deaths among over-65s during the summer heat waves of 2022, making it the deadliest year for heat since 2003.
Before the temperatures had even peaked, Friederike Otto was in her office in Imperial College London, getting ready to answer the question that she knew would be thrown at her countless times in the following week: Was climate change to blame?
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