Serious question with a dash of sarcasm...

"Name heatwaves as part of UK warning system to save lives, scientists say"... so scream the headlines in today's newswires. The scientists in question appear to be from the Physiological Society for the record.

A Met Office amber warning is already in place for Sunday to Tuesday for extreme heat. Regardless of whether it breaks records or not, this is probably fair, given the now very consistent forecasts of impending extremely high temperatures which will no doubt bring disruption to transport, impact on healthcare and possibly power supplies etc. The public and planning bodies are as prepared as possible for a period of significant weather.

Communicating weather warnings to the public is at the heart of what all us meteorologists do day-in, day-out, so any attempt to make this better should be a good thing. However, I don't see how adding a gimmicky name to a spell of hot weather really makes any difference, apart from ending up making weather forecasting seem rather like a big joke.

Naming storm systems maybe has some merit, because storms are one distinct weather system which tend to bring a short-lived period of bad weather. It does help in identifying systems historically, which is probably the most useful aspect of names. Even then I'm far from convinced we are doing that right, with the UK system currently open to the whims of forecasters. We've had like-for-like severe wind events which have sometimes been a named storm and sometimes not. Then we add the complication of overseas weather agencies naming storms which also affect Britain and the waters get even muddier.

But back to heatwaves... It seems that everything now has to be labelled, categorized and wrapped up in red tape in order to tick some contingency boxes. It may suit the health and safety departments, but in the wider public, I suspect such a naming idea would be met with ridicule rather than taken any more seriously. It feels more like a nanny-state exercise gone too far.

We already have a heatwave threshold system which has been talked about a lot in the media in recent days, explaining how different parts of the country naturally achieve heatwave status at differing temperatures.

Even this starts to seem a little bit over the top, but I suppose you have to start somewhere in order to define what is a heatwave and what isn't. A hot day in the south being more common than further north.

You could argue we just simply call it 'summer' and get on with it? It seems to just add yet more sensationalism to our everyday lives and panders to the tabloid press more than anything else.

And if we're going to anthropomorphise the weather, why stop at heatwaves? We could also name each thunderstorm, drizzly day, frosty morning or patch of fog in order to protect the public from themselves.

So if we were to use names, what criteria would we use? Would it differ for different durations of hot spells? How many names would we need for each summer season? Would the public get to choose (in)appropriate names...?

Would we have Warm Day Wilma, Bit too hot Betty, Blazing Barney or Furnace Fred??*

(*None Flintstones names also available)