‘By 2050, London’s climate is expected to be similar to present day Barcelona’
Story 240: So what does that tell us about what we can expect?
With a single quote Richard Wilford, Manager of Garden Design at Kew Gardens, has cut through the hours of video and thousands of photos from the last week. He has put his finger on the nub of the issue.
It’s hard to relate the reality of today to the potential futures of tomorrow.
Of course there are experts on hand to help. The Met Office has provided a description of the climate w can expect in Richmond borough in 2050. It is full of tables and charts. But projections struggle to make the future emotionally comprehensible.
Kew Gardens spends 36 pages setting out how its landscape and planting will need to adapt to the climate ahead. The report, which you can download below, is typically insightful and easy to read.
But that quote? That brings the thinking into sharp focus.
We can take in our today - as I write there’s a gentle breeze blowing through the opened window for the first time in weeks - and conjure with another city. It’s especially easy when that city figures so large in our imagination. First those magical Olympic Games in 1992. That football club. And the many visits down the years.
If thats’s our future, what does it feel like?
Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?
Barcelona, 2026
Of course Kew Gardens isn’t saying that Barnes SW13 in 2050 will have Barcelona’s weather today. Climate is not weather. The comparison is about the underlying climate: patterns of heat, rainfall and extremes over time.
But a week’s weather can still help make that rather abstract comparison feel real.
So here’s the forecast for Barcelona for the next seven days. These temperatures are higher than seasonal averages. August is usually nearer to 29°C high and 21°C low.
Here is a comparable forecast for Barnes. For comparison Barnes season averages are 23°C high and 14°C low.
Notes and thoughts
Of course seeing one week’s forecast can mislead. The same forecast for Barnes last week would have signalled another heatwave. Kew Gardens reached 38.1°C on Thursday 13 August, the fifth-highest temperature ever recorded in the UK.
That is why Barnes2050 is going to return to these forecasts on a regular basis in the coming weeks and months.
I want to use Barcelona as a recurring lens through which to make Barnes’s possible future less abstract. Sometimes through weather. Increasingly through how Barcelona actually lives with heat.
There will be more about the Barcelona climate today. But I want to go further. I want to look at how Barcelona has tried to adapt to it. Barnes isn’t learning from a city that has solved heat; it’s learning from a city further down the adaptation road.
How do they provide shade? How are their homes different? What about their public spaces and street design? In short, how do they live, work, play and belong?
Let’s end this report with the most obvious insight. But one worth repeating.
By 15 July, 2026 had already produced more UK days above 30°C than the whole of 1976. Warm nights were tracking at record levels. By mid-August more than 1,000 wildfires had been recorded in England and Wales. And the UK Government sent us an emergency alert.
It had taken a record-breaking British summer has given Barnes a taste of the temperatures we associate with Barcelona today.
One exceptional summer doesn’t tell us what Barnes will feel like in 2050. But climate change is shifting the odds. The sort of heat that once felt exceptional is becoming less exceptional. By mid-century, summers that now make headlines will be considerably more familiar.
So imagine if 2026 is the new normal.
What needs to change?
