Is climate change to blame for UK's extreme weather conditions?

HORNCASTLE, U.K. - Feb. 10, 2014 - PRLog -- You may not be aware of it, but Mankind has been on a long journey.  A journey lasting 13.7 billion years.  And our journey continues.  The Big History Project follows us on that journey, taking us from the Big Bang right up to the present day.  It urges us to consider not only where we have come from and how we got here, but where we are going in the future, and now more than ever, how important it is that we take care of this precious and fragile gift that we have been bequeathed.  Our planet, Planet Earth.

Big History UK is a growing group of enthusiasts who believe that Big History offers a multi-disciplinary, cross-curricular introduction to all branches of not only science but also history.  It encourages us to delve more deeply into questions many of us have asked, like 'Who are we and how did we get here?' and 'What did we do on the way?'.

It cannot have escaped the notice of anyone in the UK that in recent months extreme weather has hit many regions of the UK.  The Met Office's chief scientist, Dame Julia Slingo, has said that climate change is likely to be a factor but the variable UK climate meant there was "no definitive answer" to what caused the storms.  "But all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change," she added.  "There is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events."

More than 130 severe flood warnings - which indicate a threat to life - have been issued since December. By contrast, there were only nine in the whole of 2012.

Speaking ahead of the launch of a Met Office report - produced by the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology - into recent climatic events, Dame Julia said the UK had seen the "most exceptional period of rainfall in 248 years".

Unsettled weather at this time of year was not unexpected - but the prolonged spell of rain, as well as the intensity and height of coastal waves, was "very unusual".

"We have records going back to 1766 and we have nothing like this," she said. "We have seen some exceptional weather. We can't say it is unprecedented but it is exceptional."

The report links the recent extreme weather in Europe and North America to "perturbations" in the North Atlantic and Pacific jet streams, partly emanating from changing weather patterns in South East Asia and "associated with higher than normal ocean temperatures in that region".

The famous 'Butterfly Effect' is very real. What Mankind does in one part of Planet Earth affects every other part in ways we are only just beginning to understand.

At Prime Minister's Questions last month, David Cameron said he 'suspected' that the recent storms which had battered the UK, as well as the recent 'Polar Vortex' which affected vast areas of the United States, were connected to global temperature changes.  Following challenges by some MP's and peers he later clarified his remarks by saying that although you could not point to one isolated weather event and claim it to be climate change, many scientists were speaking of a link bewteen the two.