In much of Europe, we have had truly historic temperatures, heatwaves and droughts. There have also been huge droughts in Korea, in parts of China. But in other parts of China we’ve had huge floods, and we’ve had massive wildfires in California.

And all of those are clear evidence that, as the scientists predicted, the climate is changing under the impact of human-induced global warming. But what is quite startling is that the pace of change – the emergence of these extreme weather events – is, if anything, faster than most of the climate models predicted.