UK's future climate to be all sorts

[Philipnet]

British winters are likely to become milder and wetter like the last one but cold spells still need to be planned for, says the UK Met Office.

Summers are likely to be hotter and drier, but washouts are still on the cards, it adds.

The British assessment sounds confusing.
Assuming the Met Office study is correct (and its forecast runs out to the end of the century), it means everything from gumboots to snowploughs and sunscreen to anoraks will still be needed.

Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, sums it up like this: "We've got to continue living with the cold events and we've got to get used to the hot events."

He points out that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and that the most intense downpours seem to have become more frequent over the past 50 years - what the report calls the changing "character" of British rainfall.

But that does not guarantee that we will definitely see an increased number of storms in the future.

The British Isles are not only tucked beside a vast Atlantic Ocean whose temperatures have a powerful effect on our weather, they are also at the receiving-end of the jetstream. And this fast-flowing "river of wind" drives storms our way along a fickle path that remains poorly understood - it's an "inherently chaotic" factor, according to Prof Belcher.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26731790

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Well, more of the same in that case - because we never know what the British weather will bring!

[Stuart Wallis]

More of the same only more so and harder to predict. Not quite nuclear winters and monsoons, but...

[Perry Vale]

What a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. Check the small print to find IPCC and Al Gore, and you know to file this under "Nothing To See Here"....