Richard Littlemore's blog

The front page of the UK's Independent asks, "Are you wondering why it's so hot today?"

In the feature, Peter Stott of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research states:

"As you get a warming trend in temperatures, which is what we are observing, the risk of exceeding extreme temperatures increases dramatically.”

"This is what we saw with the European heatwave of 2003. When we analysed it, we found that the rise in average temperatures over the previous century of about one degree had doubled the risk of an extreme event like the heatwave of that year.

"And, as we go into the future, the risk of what was quite a rare event rises dramatically. We think by 2040, a summer like 2003 will be a regular event; the chances of it happening will increase from one in 250 all the way to one in two." He added: "We have an increasing amount of confidence that we are observing rising temperatures caused by human-induced rising greenhouse-gas concentrations. Unless the world changes what it is doing, we are going to see these extreme temperatures very much more."

Predictably, this will all be brushed aside by the skeptics as "alarmist" and anecdotal.