We simply don’t know exactly what the UK’s climate will do very long-term.

How our climate will change depends on the future level of carbon dioxide and other gas emissions in the atmosphere. Some impacts are also highly unpredictable in a complex climatic system.

The experts believe there is no likelihood of the Gulf Stream closing down within the next two decades, but it is a possibility longer term.

So while we look set for a warmer - and stormier - climate for at least the next 20 to 30 years, very long-term ‘who knows?’!

On the best projections now available from the International Climate Change Panel and UK Climate Impacts Programme, these are some of the anticipated changes over 75 years:

Temperature:

• Globally temperatures could rise anywhere between 1.5 and 5.8°C by 2080 – between twice and eight times the rise we have already seen since 1900.

• Each degree of warming causes a lengthening of the growing season in the UK by between 1.5 weeks in the north and 3 weeks in the south.

• In the UK, an average temperature rise of 2–3.5°C is anticipated by 2080; though some areas could warm by nearly 6°C.

• More heat waves in summer are predicted – perhaps what we would now call an exceptional summer, like 1995, occurring 2 years out of 3 by 2080.

Rain and snow:

• Winters will become wetter (20–35 per cent wetter by 2080) and summers may become drier (35–50 per cent drier by 2080).

• Snowfalls will become increasingly rare – maybe up to 90 per cent less snow by 2080.

• Heavier rainfall events will become more frequent; though this cannot be quantified.

• Up to 50 per cent reduction in soil moisture content in south and east by 2080.

The sea:

(This is heavily dependent on the speed of melting of Polar ice caps).

• Extreme sea levels could occur between 10 and 20 times more frequently by the 2080s.

• Relative sea level will continue to rise around most of the UK, perhaps by as much as 86cm in south-east England.

• Sea temperatures are expected to continue to rise over the next couple of decades, though more slowly than the land temperature rises.

• The ranges shown here reflect the fact that we don’t know future levels of carbon emissions which then determine climate.