this is bbc world news, the headlines: the vatican has announced the death of pope benedict xvi at the age of 95, almost a decade after he stood down because of ill health. his body will lie in state from monday in st peter's basilica. pope benedict led the catholic church for less than eight years until, in 2013, he became the first pope in 600 years to resign. he spent the last nine years living in the vatican. the world health organization meets chinese officials to discuss how to slow the coronavirus surge — after beijing dropped its zero covid policy. the who says chinese officials must share more real—time information on covid in the country.

a winter warning from nhs bosses in wales — they say health services are experiencing demand like never seen before, as they tackle rising flu cases and urge people to do what they can to help. now, weather world. this time on weather world we are at raf coningsby which hit the uk's highest temperature record this summer. and i will find out how severe weather effects operations here. i am here at the national meteorological archive and i will find out how that new record temperature and all weather observations are used to paint a picture of the uk and the world's changing climate. if we want to understand the climate of the future, the first step is we need to understand the climate now and the climate going back into the past.

all these sleeping bags and tents are for people in pakistan still homeless after a devastating flood. i will report on the bigger storms of the year and look at what happens after weather disasters strike. i am at raf coningsby, not only a place close to my heart in that it is where i began my forecasting career, but to british meteorology, this july at this stevenson screen, we recorded the uk highest temperature of 40.3 celsius. it has been a day of record—breaking temperatures across the uk. more than a0 celsius for the first time. july the 19th, the uk's hottest day and as temperatures soared after the driest start to the year since 1976, drought

and fire resulted. here in east london a small blaze soon became an inferno that destroyed 19 homes. the met office says more than half of the uk's oldest weather stations recorded their hottest day, so extreme it was almost impossible without human—induced climate change. it was the hottest summer in europe, spain enduring multiple heat waves including its most intense on record. in france, rivers dried up and the country's worst drought on record and the scale that spread across europe was said to be the worst in 500 years. a crippling water shortage across asia including here in china after its worst heatwave on record. for the first time, japan hit a0 degrees in the month ofjune during its second hottest summer which was followed by its warmest autumn.

the most haunting image from that hot summer is of spanish farmer angel, hailed as a hero when he dug a trench with his bulldozer to stop the fire from spreading he suffered severe burns and tragically died from his injuries in october. figures show the excess deaths reported across europe from the excessive heat waves numbered more than 20,000. raf coningsby is home to front line combat ready squadrons protecting uk airspace whatever the weather, so it's crucial we get accurate forecasts. here we are in the met office forecast office, 20 years since i've been here. it has changed a little bit. in the chair where i used to sit is alice. you were on that day back injuly when we saw temperatures of 40.3 degrees celsius recorded, so what was it like? it was something we never

expected in the uk. here it was even more incredible and remarkable because our previous maximum was nowhere near, i think we beat it by 5.5 degrees, so it was extreme for the uk as a whole. even more extreme for the local area. at what point did you realise coningsby was going to be the hottest place ever recorded in the uk? it has to go through quite vigorous quality control before we officially get the record so by the evening, we were pretty sure no one beat that 40.3 record but we were not officially holding the uk record until some days later when they came under the control on the observation equipment. i did not think i would see 40 celsius in the uk but do you think we will see that again anytime soon? we know it is possible so we know it can happen again and it will be increasingly likely with climate change.

looking out the window today, a big contrast, it is misty and foggy. are they likely to be flying later? you see on the satellite this is the area of folk this is the area of fog so it's widespread today. we will not expect it to clear around midnight tonight. that may stop some flying but you have the quick reaction alert squadrons, and they have to be up in any weather? yes, regardless of the weather they go and we have to tell them what the weather is doing at the time and they will still have to go because that is operationally important. that contact between the forecaster and the squadrons and pilots is crucial? yes. we add value to the forecast they can get from the website or from anywhere else by briefing the pilots so we showed them the satellite images and the charts that are made elsewhere

in headquarters and we make our own product and show them those as well. more to come from coningsby later when i speak to pilots of aircraft new and old to see how heat and extreme weather effects operations. that new record of 40.3 is a significant moment in weather history. but every temperature reading, every weather observation plays its part in our understanding of how the climate is changing and that is why i am here at the national meteorological archive in exeter. it is home to daily uk weather reports from 1860 up to the present day, among a vast collection of data that makes up one of the most comprehensive meteorological collections in the world. i am joined by mike, a climate information scientist here at the met office, and we are amongst this huge

collection of historical data. looking at the oldest weather observations, thinking about temperature, how is that used alongside new data to compare how the climate is changing? great question. when we look at the records, these are from durham 0bservatory in 1890 and it can be quite difficult to read but they were very systematic. when we think about observations, we think about how they are used for weather forecasting, but the forecast we generate in the met office, there is observations coming in from a huge array of sources and it's important to understanding the climate and if we want to understand the future climate, first we need to understand the climate now and we need to understand the climate in the past. we have all the standardised observations, just like the 40.3 from coningsby, but how is that feeding into the models to create a bigger picture? we calculate values across all of the uk and if we calculate an average, that provides us with a uk statistic.

these maps show long—term average, annual mean temperature 1961—1990 and in the right 1991 to 2020. the warmer areas, the areas have expanded across the map. between these periods, the uk has warmed by roughly1 degrees. 2022 will go down in history because it is the first time we broke the 40 celsius barrier but it's likely to be the hottest year on record in the uk? we shouldn't be too surprised by that because it follows the pattern of what we might expect as the climate warms. we expect more high temperature extremes of this type so this shows the uk average daily temperature over the course of the year. the black middle line shows the long—term average we might typically expect.

the areas in red show the times of year which have been warmer than average. the blue areas show where it has been colder than average, and what is apparent is that we have had so much more of the year warmer than average compared to colder than average, just look at the spell through the year, through the summer and the autumn in particular. the other thing i will point out is this huge spike in the observations injuly. when we reached 40 celsius in the uk for the first time. thank you. 2022 in the uk will notjust be remembered for extreme heat, it was stormy at times. a lorry overturned in extreme wind in 0xfordshire during storm eunice, the second and most powerful of three named storms to hit the week in february. thankfully the driver was not seriously hurt. falling trees caused damage and widespread travel disruption. my god! i caught that on video.

and another weather record was set on the coast of the isle of wight, a gust of 122 miles an hour, the strongest ever recorded in england. the worst weather disasters can often lead to a huge and global response and one of the biggest of these in 2022 followed the devastating floods in pakistan and here in west london, there is another batch of much—needed things waiting to go out there, food, toothpaste, sanitary products, we have seen tents and sleeping bags, all ready to go on a flight to pakistan to help those who are homeless and trying to get through winter. thousands of people are still living in makeshift camps with no access to clean drinking water and fear

of disease spreading in the conditions. the force of the floods was felt as early as may when a glacial lake outburst led to this bridge collapsing during a worsening pre—monsoon heatwave. by august, destruction was widespread. this new hotel was washed away in minutes. pakistan had its wettestjuly and august on record and the country's climate minister said a third of the country was under water. more than 1000 people died, over half a million homes destroyed. joining me now is abdullah ali, who has been helping to put the aid together, so what is the ongoing need? we are several months after the main flood but loads of people are still homeless. at the moment there's loads of people without homes or shelter out there. we need to gather tents, any shelter that can help them, tents, food items, try

to rebuild houses for them. what do you feel about the response you've had to get all this stuff together? it's amazing, the response we've received this phenomenal received is phenomenal and i appreciate everyone that has been helping, all of the donors and volunteers, we really appreciate it. i know you are particularly interested to get tax relief on this stuff when it reaches pakistan? correct, at the moment we are getting tax and duty over there for shipments being sent out so we are trying to do something that will waive that and help us out as much as it can. it would be great. what does it make you feel like knowing there has been this response? personally i feel great because we are coming together as a community, people donating stuff towards the people that are poor. good luck with all of your ongoing efforts to get that relief out there. 2022 has brought more shocking scenes of flash floods and landslides.

here on the italian island of ischia, during the night month of ischia, during the night, mud surges towards the sea taking everything with that after several days of intense rain. in october on crete, cars were swept into the sea by a powerful flood that locals say caught them by surprise, also at night, after a day of rain. brazil endured severe storms that caused deadly flash flooding. this is the aftermath of a landslide that swept onto a motorway in early december, and in petropolis in february, over 200 people died in a catastrophic mudslide that followed several hours still to come an abscess the science behind storm surges as hurricane and ian wreaks havoc in florida. welcome back to raf coningsby. this base has a special place

in my heart, it is where i started forecasting and it is the place with the highest temperature in the uk ever recorded was the summer, 40.3 celsius. behind me are some typhoon aircraft based here but what impact does the temperatures have on operations? joining me is the station commander group captain, billy cooper. let's go back to that day injuly. what sort of impact do the temperatures have on coningsby? any extremes of weather and particularly temperature can have an effect even on modern aircraft. in particular the engine performance, either at very high altitude or temperature, we find the density of the fuel will change so the way in which the maintainers operate with the aircraft can be different.

at coningsby you have the quick reaction alert squadron who have to be up in the air at a moments notice what sort of weather impacts do look at? impacts do you have to look at? we have to be aware of what the weather conditions are notjust here at coningsby but across the uk and europe and we've been particularly concerned about thunderstorms, if any areas were particularly cloudy, which might make it difficult for us to intercept other aircraft. it's notjust modern—day aircraft in operation here, it's also home to the battle of britain memorial flight. these priceless artefacts are kept in airworthy condition and can be seen in the skies above all sorts of events during the summer keeping their rich history alive. and here we are in the hangar of the battle of britain memorial flight. behind me just one of only two operational lancaster bombers in the world. operational lancaster

it is here with other aircraft, and in charge of them is squadron leader mark sugden. thank you for having us here, amazing. we were with the station commander earlier chatting about the typhoons and their technology but this is historic aircraft so what sort of weather requirements do you have? we fly national treasures and safety and preservation at the forefront of what we do and weather plays a big part. before we go near the aircraft planning starts with weather and getting a good understanding of what is out there, we ask an awful lot of the met office, i know they do not have a crystal ball but we fly around the country, it is not an exact science, we know. but our limits are less than a typhoon and we need to have an understanding of it before we take flight. what sort of impact did the record heat have on your operations? the engines create a huge amount of heat and on the ground they get hot quickly which back in the 40s was great. you want the engine to get up to temperature quickly but for us,

the aeroplane behind me on a normal summer day probably from starting the engine on the ground you have eight minutes before she overheats. with the temperatures we have had it makes the problem worse. back in the day they were operational fighter planes and they had to fly in some tricky conditions? exactly, the precise words, they needed to, there was no choice, in the 40s, flying at night and in challenging conditions. we lost aircrew through no enemy action and just because of the weathers they had to fly in. stunning, and as you say national treasures to be looked after. thank you forjoining us. i am here at the national meteorological archive looking at how weather data is collected and used to inform us about how the climate is changing. earlier i looked at temperature but now we look at rainfall. one of the most important types of weather data recorded is rainfall. how do we record rainfall

at specific sites and interpret that to say, for instance, back in the 3rd of october 2020 it was the wettest day on record in the uk? we monitor carefully, how we take the observations from a network of 2000 rain gauges across the uk, we interpolate the data into a gridded data set and we make this map of rainfall on the 3rd of october for example, the wettest day on record with 30.1 millimetres. that statistic is basically an average across the uk but when we do the maths on that, 30.1 millimetres comes up as 7.6 cubic kilometres, approximately enough rain to fill loch ness so quite a remarkable amount! once we had the system for knowing how much rain falls across the uk talk to me about this one which goes back 180 years and how has rainfall

changed in the uk over time? this is a uk national rainfall series and there is natural variability in the weather from one year, so the line goes up and down but what we have done is we have put a trend line through the data. you can see there are fluctuations in the data but what we can see most apparent towards the end of the data is this increase in rainfall and that is as we expect, as the climate gets warmer, it gets wetter. in 2022 the met office was able to extend the uk official rainfall record back even further, an extra 26 years back to 1836, after thousands of volunteers help to digitise millions of handwritten rainfall observations in the spare time they had during the pandemic. all of this is bound for pakistan for the victims of the catastrophic flooding. just one of a number of weather—related disasters in 2022. another is drought in east africa, a huge gate every continuing as famine limbs following for failed

rainy season is bad in west africa, another is drought in east africa, a huge aid effort continuing as famine limbs following for failed rainy season is bad in west africa, another is drought in east africa, a huge aid effort continuing as famine looms following four failed rainy seasons. but in west africa, the problem is there is too much rain and the worst floods in a decade in nigeria. declared an overwhelming disaster, the floods here killed more than 600 people and over 200,000 homes were destroyed. rainfall levels in the north and east of the country were estimated to be up

to 75% above normal. the european union has partnered with countries across west africa on a project to improve flood warnings in the area and nigeria says without its enhanced short—term forecast, the devastation would have been worse. australia in october and more flooding rain, this from victoria as the country went on to record its second wettest spring. a rare third consecutive la nina weather pattern produced deluge after deluge in the south—east of the country. and for sydney, a truly remarkable year, it's wettest in data going back to 1859, a record the city broke with nearly three months of the year still left. few places have been harder hit than here, one of the most flood prone places in new south wales but even here, the february floods with the worst they had known. we had literally water coming from the ocean, water coming from the catchment. 800 millilitres of rain in about 24 hours landing on top of us. it was literally the perfect storm. you know, there's no doubt there is an issue with climate change. when it comes to tropical cyclones in 2022, this super typhoon was one of the fastest strengthening storms

ever recorded in the pacific as it approached the philippines in september. good afternoon. hurricane ian is about to make landfall. - in the us, few hurricanes are as costly as ian, which hit florida in september causing so much damage that losses are expected to exceed $50 billion. these scenes from fort myers show the scale of destruction from a storm tied as the fifth strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the us. ian's most devastating impact came from the storm surge, and susan powell explains what this is and why they can be so damaging. when powerful hurricanes and typhoons hit the headlines, there is much focus on the wind speed and categorisation. but for coastal areas, the biggest concern by far is storm surge. this is known to be the biggest threat to life and livelihoods. storm surge is a rise in water level above normal tides generated by the storm.

heights of over 8.5 metres, or 28 feet, have been recorded. how do storms produce this? a small part, around 5%, comes from an atmospheric pressure fall before the storm, and relatively less pressure pushing down let's water up well. the major driver by far is wind. the stronger the wind, the more force that can be applied to the water surface and literally push up an increasingly large body of water. as storms approach land, where wind direction is onshore, the mass of water literally pushes inland. the opposite however can apply, where it storm winds or offshore a negative storm surge can suck water away from the coast. predicting surges is complex. storm intensity, forward speed, size and angle of approach all play a part as does the shape

of the coast. 2022 saw another united nations cop climate conference. this one in egypt needed an extra second day to finally reach agreement on loss and damage, a pooled fund for countries most affected by climate change. i hear no objections, it is so decided. but that deal comes in a year when the world meteorological 0rganisation says atmospheric concentrations of key greenhouse gases reach record levels. we are in the fight of our lives and we are losing. greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. global temperatures keep rising. and our planet is fast approaching tipping point that will make climate chaos irreversible. finally, when there is too much snow and it is coming at you much too quickly,

this is one of 2022's luckiest escapes. an avalanche caught on camera and heading towards a british hiker in kurdistan injuly. bleep. he was on the edge of a cliff with no escape. his excitement at what initially seemed so far away turned to fear as the snow and ice surged towards him. dear god! snow was poring over the top of me. snow was pouring over the top of me. for a second, it carried on getting worse. - that is when i did not know what was going to happen. | which is probably a moment i will not forget too soon! i and then it steadily turned - into this weird kind of blizzard, from the air displacement, i'm not sure. _ literally it alljust blew me over. i was not covered in more than a few

inches so i was able _ to stand up straightaway, - and be grateful i was still there. that is set for weather world and our review of 2022, that is it for weather world and our review of 2022, another of the worlds top ten warmest years on for the uk, one of the warmest. that is what will go down on record here in the national meteorological archive. and of all the weather records here and globally, it is the hot ones that are overwhelmingly being broken the most often. from all of the team, until next time, goodbye! hello. with flooding still ongoing in one of two areas, more rain to come through the rest of today, particularly for england and wales. there could be some

further travel disruption. the wettest, as i said, will be england and wales. heavy rain pushing its way from west to east, strengthening winds as well. bit brighter, though, for northern ireland this afternoon across some southern and eastern parts of scotland with sunny spells, scattering of wintry showers across the far north and northwest where for one or two temperatures won't get above freezing. contrast that with the southeast of england, an incredibly mild end to the year — 15 degrees possible. but it will be a windy end and there will be more rain to come this evening spreading northwards across england, wales and by midnight that'll be across northern ireland, southern scotland and the far north of england with a bit of sleet and snow possible even into glasgow and edinburgh, but turning very cold across the north with some ice around. temperatures still around 12 degrees, east anglia and the southeast. the rest of the nights that rain in the southeast corner with some showers clears away, a few showers in the west, but the rain turns increasingly to snow as it hits that even colder air across northern scotland later. happy hogmanay.

this is bbc news. welcome, if you're watching here in the uk, or around the globe. the former pope, benedict xvi, has died at the age of 95, almost a decade after he stood down because of ill health. bells tolling the bells toll in st peter's square as the vatican announces the former pope's body will lie in state from monday in saint peter's basilica. pope benedict led the catholic church for less than eight years until, in 2013, he became the first pope in 600 years to resign. this is the scene live in vatican city, where the former pope lived since 2013.