The UK, Japan and South Korea sweltered this year through the hottest summers since each country began keeping records, their weather agencies said Monday.

Temperatures the world over have soared in recent years as human-induced climate change creates ever more erratic weather patterns.

The UK's provisional mean June-August temperature was 16.1C, which was 1.51C above the long-term average and surpassed all years since 1884, including the previous record, set in 2018, the Met Office said.

The British summer saw four heatwaves, below-average rainfall and sustained sunshine, and followed the nation's warmest spring in more than a century.

Japan's average temperature spike was even starker over the same three summer months, at 2.36C above "the standard value", making it the hottest since records began in 1898, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.

It was the third consecutive summer of record high temperatures, the agency noted.

This year's scorching heat left some 84,521 people hospitalised nationwide from May 1 to August 24, according to Japan's Fire and Disaster Management........

© International Business Times