Climate change makes extreme weather more likely to hit UK

Catastrophic floods such as those that southern Britain experienced earlier this year are now more likely, owing to climate change caused by greenhouse-gas emissions. Simulations presented last week at the annual assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna show that the risk of extremely wet winters in the region has increased by about 25% compared to the pre-industrial era.
Extreme rainfall events previously predicted to occur in Wales and southern England once every 100 years, on average, should now be expected once every 80 years, according to the simulations, which are the preliminary results of a climate study by researchers at the University of Oxford, UK.
The widespread flooding that occurred in parts of England and Wales this winter came along with the highest amount of winter rainfall ever recorded by the Radcliffe Observatory at Oxford, which has kept precipitation records for the past 250 years. The deluge fuelled ongoing public debate about whether extreme weather and floods will become more frequent in a warming world, and whether specific events can be linked to climate change.

 http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-makes-extreme-weather-more-likely-to-hit-uk-1.15141