The Guardian today had a report by John Vidal about yesterday’s rain and other record weather events in Britain:
“The Met Office confirmed that several weather stations had recorded their highest levels ever for June. Sheffield had received 236mm by 2pm. ‘It’s not even the end of the month,’ said the Met Office.
“But is it climate change? Here the official line is that no one can pin any one event on anything as vast as global warming. However, with temperatures generally rising around the world, and subtropical temperatures becoming more and more common in Europe, extreme events are predicted, with intense localised storms such as those currently being experienced becoming the norm.
“Britain has been experiencing nine months of extremes. After a drought which had water restrictions imposed across the country and water companies applying for desalination plants, last autumn and winter combined were the wettest on record, and the three months of spring were together the hottest on records  for the whole of the UK, which date back to 1914.”
Extreme weather is happening in most parts of the world and has already adversely affected food production, contributing to falling world reserve food stocks. But so far we have been remarkably lucky that poor harvests in one part of the world have been partly balanced by good harvests elsewhere, and we have been able to draw down on reserve stocks. It is only a matter of time before several major food producing areas have bad harvests in the same year. If this happens when reserve stocks are low, we are in deep trouble.Â