England’s coastal spots starting to see more unhealthily warm nights due to climate change

July 24: Sleep is being impacted by climate change due to warmer nights, analysis from Round Our Way and Climate Central shows.

Southern coastal towns were hit the hardest by the rising nighttime temperatures with Clacton-on-Sea recording 25 nights when temperatures were above 20°C and 132 additional nights higher than 18 degrees over 10 years, attributable to climate change. Margate was just behind, experiencing 15 more nights at 20 degrees and 130 more nights above 18 degrees.

The story was featured in iNews and the Clacton Gazette.

The analysis looks at the number of times the minimum nighttime temperature exceeded 18° and 20°C in summers (June-August) over the last 10 years (2014-2023) and is attributable to climate change. London experienced 28 more nights when the minimum nighttime temperature everywhere in the capital exceeded 18 degrees and 4.3 nights higher than 20 degrees across the last 10 years, followed by the East of England and Southeast of England regions that experienced just over 25 more nights above 18 degrees and around 4 more nights above 20 degrees.

Towns and cities across Essex, Kent, Sussex, Norfolk and Suffolk are all experiencing more warm nights according to the analysis, including: Littlehampton, Southend, Leigh-on-Sea, Minster, Brighton, Hove, Ramsgate, Worthing, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Bognor Regis, Chichester, Folkestone, Eastbourne, Hastings, Seaford, Ipswich, Dover and Herne Bay which have all experienced 60 or more extra warm nights above 18 degrees in the last 10 years.

The Sleep Charity in the UK, defines a smaller range of comfortable temperatures for sleep between 16°C and 18°C. Thus, the analysis was repeated in the UK. using 18°C.

Night-time temperatures have increased more rapidly than day-time temperatures as the world heats up – warmer nights make it harder for people to recover from the heat of the day, which increases health risks especially for children, older people and pregnant women. There is a growing body of evidence that as night-time temperatures rise, it is adversely affecting the quality and length of sleep. The evidence shows that sleep impacts physical and mental health in many different ways, not least that poor sleep is linked to shorter life expectancy.

It is also worth noting that this analysis uses temperatures measured outside rather than within buildings so an outside temperature of 18-20 degrees will often feel warmer in people’s homes and inside public buildings like hospitals. A recent report from the Resolution Foundation stated: “At current summer temperatures, 20% homes in England overheat, with 36% of the housing stock at high risk of overheating in the future.” The same report also noted that flats and smaller homes are the most at risk of higher temperatures, especially in urban areas.

While at the moment nighttime temperatures in the UK rarely exceed the 20°C threshold, parts of the country are already experiencing an increase in the amount of days at both nights above 20 degrees and 18 degrees. Climate Central analysis of nighttime temperatures in the United States shows that most cities saw an average of at least 5 days where the minimum temperature exceeded 20°C.

The top 24 cities in the U.S. with the highest number of days added by climate change were in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Nevada, and Arizona, with between 40 and 53 additional days on average. This analysis shows this to be an increasing issue, which will come to impact the UK more over time which will put vulnerable people such as children and older people at more risk of health impacts. 

Roger Harding, Director of Round Our Way, a not-for-profit supporting people impacted by climate change in the UK, said:

“When we’ve had so much rain recently it is easy to forget how horrible it is to try and sleep through a hot and sticky night, the kind many of us suffered through in the summer of 2022. But even when outside temperatures are not off the charts, the UK is still experiencing more and more warm nights as our weather is impacted by climate change. 

“Academic studies suggest we fall asleep quicker, for longer and more deeply in cooler rooms, so it is a worry for our health that Britain is starting to experience more warm nights. While other countries experience higher temperatures they typically have homes and air conditioning designed to deal with this, unlike here. It is typically the very young and very old people in our lives who struggle to deal with high heat the most. 

“Thanks to climate change the weather is no longer just the subject of idle small talk for Brits, . Instead we go from worries about floods one minute to to sleepless sticky nights caused by warmer temperatures the next. We need politicians to take the threat of climate impacts seriously and invest in clean energy to stop this getting worse for our families.”

Michelle Young, Climate Impacts Research Associate at Climate Central, said,

“Our analysis shows that over the last decade the average person on Earth experienced 4.8 more nights that were uncomfortably or even dangerously hot due to climate change. These hot nights prevent people from recovering from heat during the day and are likely to have shortened and disrupted people’s sleep, with a range of serious knock-on effects on physical and mental health.

“In the UK, while nighttime temperatures currently only reach 20 C degrees outside, we can see from our wider global analysis that this is likely to increase for the UK and cause more and more risks to people’s health. While the nighttime temperatures in other countries are higher the impacts in the UK can still be as severe, in parts, due to a lack of air conditioning and housing equipped for hot weather. 

“As nighttime temperatures continue to shoot up, there will be more and more of these sleepless nights until the world stops burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas and cutting down forests.”

York mum uses tricks learned growing up in sticky American city to deal with UK nighttime heat

Dr Paige E. Davis, 43, is an academic who lives in York with two sons aged nine and four. When the weather gets warmer both her children have trouble falling asleep in their terraced home, which is about 100 years old. 

She said: "They often want to go to our living room which is a few degrees cooler. Sometimes I shower them and have them fall asleep wet, but when it is really hot it rarely helps. They are cranky and even tell me that they are nauseated in the middle of the night."

Image: Dr Paige Davis with her partner, Tyson, and sons, Fisher and West.

She added that warmer nights affect her sleep too, leaving her "not as well rested if I am too hot when I sleep. I often wake nauseated". 

To mitigate the heat, she does things she remembers from years living in the heat of Philadelphia in the US, where she is originally from, like showering and not drying off before bedtime. 

She recalled being pregnant in the US with her firstborn amid very hot weather, and her mother saying "the baby is going to boil inside you".

"That frightened me," she said. "Like, thanks Mum?!"

Clacton nursery: “the children are more lethargic and become more tired easily”
Rachel Dench is operations manager at Little Pals Nursery in Clacton-on-Sea, which has 75 children in at any one time, aged between six weeks and four years.

She said that during hot weather: "we try to keep the rooms as cool as possible using fans, ice play and water play. The children are more lethargic and become more tired easily".

Image: Karen Isgrove (left), operations director and Rachel Dench (right), operations manager at Little Pals Nursery in Clacton. The children are Remus and Poppy.

There are regular breaks for drinking "and we also offer ice poles which they suck on, and ensure the garden areas have shade. We have been lucky, we have not had any staff or children faint. We put ice in trays in front of the fans to try and produce cooler air".

Mrs Dench said that in 2022 it was so hot one day that the decision was made to close early and parents were telephoned to come and collect their child.

She said: "Obviously we appreciated that the parents were working, however, we had to explain that we could not get the rooms any cooler."

Mrs Dench, who has worked at the nursery for six years, added that staff become more tired too "and we have to be mindful of dehydration".

She said that babies in the 0-2 years room "may sleep more often in hot weather but we can't say we notice a difference in those over two".