Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

It’s perhaps stating the obvious but the UK & Ireland continue to swelter under a heat wave. After a rainy start to the summer, just in time to ruin the odd day of Wimbledon, the sunshine had kicked in with a vengeance, breaking recent meteorological records.

Naturally, British people are not well equipped for extreme weather. Everyone is used to changeable weather: it’s always a source of a good natter.  But extreme weather is something else, leaving the Answers community asking how to beat the heat. If you throw in the factor of public transport, you can be sure arguments will ensue and you really have to be careful what you say in the heat of an argument.

City dwellers, already struggling through heat and public transportation, might feel that the world is against them when they learn about the phenomenon of urban heat islands. You could have probably guessed it from anecdotal evidence but it turns out cities are actually hotter places than their surroundings, even though they get less sunlight. Perhaps the heat index is a better way of quantifying their suffering, as it takes into account humidity as well as temperature.

Of course the heat wave begs a far larger question: are we witnessing the effects of climate change? Perhaps we are.

— Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team