Britain recorded its highest-ever temperature of 38.7 Celsius (101.7 Fahrenheit) in Cambridge on July 25, the country’s national weather service said on Monday, confirming an earlier provisional reading.
The temperature was recorded at Cambridge University Botanic Garden, beating a previous record high of 38.5 Celsius from August 2003.
The Met Office, a government weather forecasting agency, provisionally announced the result on Friday and said on Monday that it had now been officially validated.
The Met Office said there was still a chance that an even higher value had been recorded elsewhere, as some of its observation sites only report monthly.