Europe faces wildfires and drought after heatwave

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Summer should last another week, as the UK won’t enter meteorological autumn until September 1. But trees have started turning a rusty orange, and leaves are lining streets across the country, giving Britons the impression that the season has already arrived. Those sudden changes are deceptive, as scientists believe the unusual trend comes from environmental stress.

Why does it look like autumn in the UK?

As fields and grassy banks across the country show, the heatwave has taken its toll on the UK’s usually verdant landscape.

Hot weather has leeched moisture from the ground to such an extent that even trees, which boast vast root networks as deep as two metres into the soil, have suffered.

Lack of water has damaged and could kill trees with roots closer to the surface.

Leigh Hunt, a senior horticultural advisor at the Royal Horticultural Society, told the BBC that trees with yellowing leaves would recover with rainfall.

Others that reach a “critical point” where they can’t use rainwater to rehydrate will dry up and die in a process known as desiccation.

Desiccation is a natural part of autumn and spring that causes plants to lose their foliage.

As this has started too early for experts to deem the changes natural, they have termed the phenomenon “false autumn”.

Falling leaves aren’t the only sign of false autumn, as woodland observers have seen other out-of-place developments.

Berry growth, another autumn staple, has started before its time this year.

Fritha West, a citizen science assistant at the Woodland Trust, said “record-breaking heat” has induced “a number of early autumn events”.

She told the Daily Mail: “We have received some of our earliest ever ripe blackberry records from the south of England.”

“Hawthorn and rowan are also ripening early in some parts of the country, where early leaf tinting has also been observed.”

The intense heat has led officials to place drought warnings over eight British areas.

The National Drought Group, an arm of the Environment Agency, has placed eight of the 14 areas under its jurisdiction on official drought status.

And two more are likely to enter the list before the end of the month.

Drought areas currently include:

• Devon and Cornwall
• Solent and South Downs
• Kent and south London
• Herts and north London
• East Anglia
• Thames
• Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire
• East Midlands

Yorkshire and the West Midlands may follow later this month as Yorkshire Water weighs whether to impose a hosepipe ban.

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