Don’t blame climate change for the crummy weather

It was climate change wot gave us such a wet and stormy winter – or so you may have gathered from various reports this week. ‘Never ending UK rain made ten times more likely by climate change,’ declared a Guardian headline. ‘Climate change is a major reason why the UK suffered such a waterlogged winter, scientists have confirmed,’ asserted the BBC. There have also been numerous references to a ‘record stormy winter’ – based on it having the highest number of named storms in, er, the nine years since the Met Office started naming storms.

But how much of this reflects reality? The reports were based on the publication of the latest analysis by something called World Weather Attribution – a Netherlands-based initiative which attempts to link particular adverse weather events to climate change, by running climate models.