Summer heat and low rainfall showed no clear change in their link in England between 1910-1967 and 1968-2025

We tested whether summer heat and low rainfall became more closely linked in England. We used Met Office country records for 116 summers in 1910-2025. Separate linear trends were removed from June-August mean temperature and rainfall totals in two 58-year periods. Heat-dryness strength, defined as minus the residual correlation, rose from 0.598 to 0.601. The change was 0.003, with a conditional 95% five-year block interval of -0.225 to +0.215. Thus, this test gave no clear direction of change. Joint upper-fifth heat and lower-fifth rain excess fell by 3.45 percentage points, with limits of -5.26 to +6.90 points. Other block lengths, quadratic trends, ranks and a longer record also left the primary direction uncertain. Wales and Scotland checks had intervals across zero. The result does not show equal dependence or stable drought risk. Country means, one revised product, chosen periods and conditional uncertainty limit inference. Code, source hashes, aggregate results, all change draws, an audit and a figure are included. Source and annual record tables remain outside the signed package.

compound extremes · summer · rainfall · temperature · England · dependence · null result