By general consensus the British summer of 2024 was a bit rubbish – even though the numbers say it was about average. What is behind this clash of perceptions? The Met Office socio-meteorologist Helen Roberts says it is because recent hot summers have changed our expectations.
“There have been multiple heatwaves in recent years, including the unprecedented extreme heat in 2022 as well as the long, hot lockdown summer of 2020,” says Roberts. She says that two psychological effects, recency bias and the availability heuristic – in which we perceive things through the lens either of recent events or memories that spring readily to mind – “mean we get used to these extremes and then expect more of the same”.
