THE highest temperature anywhere in the UK this month has just been recorded in Scotland.

A high of 26.8C was registered today (Wednesday) in Tyndrum, Stirling, as the country swelters in a late-summer heatwave.

The warm conditions are expected to last into the weekend, according to the latest Met Office forecast.

Meteorologists say Thursday will be a "fine, dry day", though temperatures will be "significantly" down from Wednesday.

The rest of the week and the weekend will see fine and dry weather with plenty of sunshine and light winds.

Temperatures are expected to remain significantly above the seasonal averages.

It comes as scientists revealed Last year was Europe’s warmest on record by a considerable margin.

The average temperature in Europe in 2020 was 1.9C above the long-term average for 1981-2010, the 31st state of the climate report published online by the American Meteorological Society shows.

Parts of the continent including Luxembourg, Sweden, Finland and European Russia saw temperatures 2C or more above the average for recent decades.

Although parts of north-west Europe were relatively cooler, the UK still saw its third hottest year on record in 2020, after 2014 and 2006, with temperatures 0.78C above the 1981-2010 baseline.

The report shows the average surface temperature over land areas in the Arctic was the highest since the data record began in 1900.

Last year was also the seventh successive year annual temperatures in the Arctic were more than 1C above the average for the period 1981-2010.

While some 70 monitoring gauges across Europe showed record one-day rainfall totals, there were fewer record extremes than normal, especially over southern Europe, with lower cloudiness and widespread severe to extreme drought over the region.

Globally, temperatures in 2020 were 0.6C above the average for the 30-year period from 1981, despite the temporary cooling effect of a “La Nina” weather phenomenon in the Pacific.

Last year was one of the three warmest years in records dating back to 1850, the report confirms.

The state of the climate report comes after the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) review of climate science earlier this month said the global temperature in 2020 was nearly 1.1C warmer than 19th century levels.

It said humans are unequivocally driving global warming, the impacts are already being felt, with more extreme heatwaves, rain and floods, and rising sea levels, and will worsen further without action to curb temperature rises.