SCOTLAND has provisionally seen a new record high temperature as the UK swelters in a heatwave.

The Met Office said that Charterhall, in the Scottish Borders, had seen temperatures reach 34.8C.

If confirmed, such a high temperature would break the previous record of 32.9C, set in Greycook in August 2003, by almost two degrees.

It comes after the temperature in the UK rose above 40C for the first time ever.

The record – of 40.2C – was set at London’s Heathrow airport on Tuesday at 12:50pm.

By 4pm, a new record of 40.3C had been set at Coningsby in Lincolnshire.

St James’s Park and Kew Gardens were among the other areas to also break the 40C barrier.

At least 29 observation sites across England provisionally broke the previous all-time maximum UK record of 38.7C on Tuesday.

The Met Office also issued yellow thunderstorm warnings for parts of England and Scotland in the wake of the hot weather.

Meteorologists said there was a risk of “frequent lightning and very gusty winds”.

The Met Office’s chief of science and technology, Professor Stephen Belcher, said he was not expecting to see such highs in his career.

Belcher said studies had shown it was “virtually impossible” for the UK to record such high temperatures in an “undisrupted climate”.

“These extremes will get more extreme in the future,” he warned.

Belcher went on: “In some ways of course 40C is an arbitrary figure because we see the impacts of heatwaves at lower temperatures, but for me it’s a real reminder that the climate has changed and it will continue to change.”

The professor warned that if the world continues under a “high emissions scenario we could see temperatures like this every three years”, and stressed the need for net zero.