Climate change experts always warn of exceptional weather and earlier this year we highlighted this in relation to the northern floods and rainfall levels. This set of five articles outlines how thinking is changing on:

1 & 2  How scientists are attributing exceptional weather events to climate change

3 – 5  Cover more extremes: global temperatures in February, Arctic sea ice and February rainfall

1.  Linking weather to climate change – can we link extreme weather to climate change?

Energy Crunch: New Economics Foundation: ‘The science of ‘extreme event attribution’ took a step forward with a study published this week assessing the current state of the art. It examined the conditions under which we can reliably say that extreme weather events have been caused in part by climate change. Nick Butler in the FT predicts that advances in this science could lead to more public demand for action on climate change

2.  Elsewhere, research by Oxford University indicates that human-induced climate change increased the risk of severe storms like those that hit much of the UK in recent years.That’s according to new analysis from an international team of climate scientists led by researchers at Oxford University. Click here to read more

3.  NASA: Earth’s global temperatures in February 2016 were the most abnormally warm on record for any month, according to two, independent analyses from NOAA and NASA. NOAA’s global State of the Climate report released Thursday found February’s surface temperature over the Earth’s surface was 1.21 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average, not only crushing the warmest February in the 137-year period of record set just one year prior, but also the largest temperature anomaly of any month in NOAA’s database dating to 1880. Just the previous week, a separate analysis from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies also found February to have the largest departure from average in their records also dating to 1880, 1.35 degrees Celsius above the 1951-1980 average.

Weather Underground Comment: This was “a true shocker, and yet another reminder of the incessant long-term rise in global temperature resulting from human-produced greenhouse gases”, wrote Jeff Masters and Bob Henson in a blog on the Weather Underground, which analysed the data released on Saturday.

4.  Records for reduced Arctic Ice 2015-16 and video of 25 years loss

Guardian: A record expanse of Arctic sea never froze over this winter and remained open water as a season of freakishly high temperatures produced deep – and likely irreversible – changes on the far north. Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre said on Monday that the sea ice cover attained an average maximum extent of 14.52m sq km (5.607m sq miles) on 24 March, the lowest winter maximum since records began in 1979. The low beats a record set only last year of 14.54m sq km (5.612m sq miles), reached on 25 February 2015. Click here to read more. Arctic ice melt video – video.

5.  Water Briefing ‘English rainfall totals above average for 4th consecutive month      The latest official statistics on the water situation report for England show that in February rainfall totals were above average for the fourth consecutive month at 130% of the long term average. Regional variations in the statistics show rainfall totals for February ranged from less than 30mm in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Kent and Essex to more than 150mm in parts of Cumbria, Devon and Cornwall. Monthly rainfall totals were above the February long term average (LTA) in approximately two thirds of hydrological areas across England. However, the Esk and Kent hydrological areas in the north-west of England received around twice the February LTA rainfall. The 12 month period to the end of February 2016 was also the wettest 12 month period on record (since 1910) in north-west England.’