Of course, we cannot say that the remarkable temperatures in Europe this week are the result of globalwarming. What we can say is that they correspond to the predictions made by climate scientists. As the MetOffice reported on Sunday, "all our models have suggested that this type of event will happen morefrequently."[1] In December it predicted that, as a result of climate change, 2003 would be the warmestyear on record.[2] Two weeks ago its research centre reported that the temperature rises on every continentmatched the predicted effects of climate change caused by human activities, and showed that natural impacts,such as sunspots or volcanic activity, could not account for them.[3] Last month the World MeteorologicalOrganisation announced that "the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been thelargest in any century during the past 1000 years", while " the trend for the period since 1976 isroughly three times that for the past 100 years as a whole."[4] Climate change, the WMO suggests, providesan explanation not only for record temperatures in Europe and India but also for the frequency of tornadoes inthe United States and the severity of the recent floods in Sri Lanka.[5]