The 60% problem: Why a hotter climate is a crisis for the UK economy

What is 10% cyan, 28% magenta, 49% yellow and 0% black? Answer: most of the British countryside. The grass, the wheat, the barley: it’s all turned a pale and dusty yellow, as have most of our public parks.

Last week, on a flight from London to Edinburgh, I got a bird’s-eye view of the effects of this epic drought. The fields have become rectangles of off-white yellow, framed by trees and hedgerows whose foliage is turning crisp and brown.

What should be the height of summer is already a mixture of autumn and the tropics. Most of our rivers are bordered by expanses of dry mud where the water used to flow.