The UK Met Office’s defence of its accuracy comes as record temperatures across Western Europe expose a critical vulnerability: strategic climate preparedness. The heatwave, with temperatures exceeding 40°C in parts of the UK, is not merely a meteorological event. It is a threat vector.
Infrastructure built for temperate conditions is buckling. Rail lines deform. Power grids falter.
These are not isolated failures; they are indicators of systemic brittleness that a hostile actor could exploit. The Met Office’s insistence that its models correctly predicted the heatwave’s intensity is cold comfort. The real question is why that intelligence did not translate into operational readiness.
In military terms, we have a multi-domain failure: logistics (transport networks), cyber (grid stability), and force protection (personnel welfare). The UK’s National Security Risk Assessment must now treat extreme weather as a peer-level adversary. Return on investment in climate adaptation is not a matter of political expediency; it is a matter of strategic resilience.
The chess board is set, and the opening moves are already being made by an opponent that does not play by the rules of parliamentary debate.
