the climate brief Accurate Reporting of Climate Science

Climate change is set to increasingly disrupt food supplies and water resources in vulnerable areas like sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Two new reports look at the effects of climate change on poorer communities around the world - and asks what they could mean for us. 

The World Bank's report, ' Turn down the heat', which is out today, looks at the likely effects of two degrees and four degrees warming on agricultural production, water resources, coastal ecosystems and cities across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. 

It warns thata two degree Celsius temperature rise could lead to a 10 million increase in malnourished children in Africa by the middle of the century. By the 2030s, just 1.5 degrees of warming could mean that 40 per cent of the land currently used for growing maize will be unsuitable for growing the crop.  

A  video lays it out: More drought means more crop failure, which leads to more hunger. 

In South Asia, the report highlights the potential impact of changing seasons on the summer monsoon. If temperatures rise by four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, an extreme wet monsoon, which currently occurs about once every hundred years, could occur every ten years by 2100. 

If this morning's news is anything to go by the UK's set to see rainy, grim summers for the next 10 years - all because of natural changes in the Atlantic Ocean. Following all the recent talk of whether melting Arctic sea ice could be to blame for our weird weather, are humans are off the hook after all? Seems not. As ever, it's far from a simple story.

"Unusual seasons"

The UK's climate is usually described as temperate. But this year began with an extremely cold and prolonged winter, ending up as the second coldest March since records began in 1910.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it followed a particularly disappointing summer in 2012, which saw the  wettest June for over a century. December in 2010 saw a mean temperature of - 0.18 degrees Celsius, the coldest on record.

As  much of the  UK press reported, the Met Office held a  meeting yesterday "to discuss the recent run of unusual seasons here in the UK". It released a  summary of its findings last night.

From last weekend's weather to climate change over the next few decades, climate skeptic journalist David Rose throws together a few different aspects of the UK's weather system in an article this weekend - the intended effect of which is apparently to cast doubt on the abilities of the UK's official forecaster.

In his article in yesterday's  Mail on Sunday, Rose takes us on a whistlestop tour of the Met Office's research into what's behind unusual weather in recent years, mixing up many of the already complicated issues as he goes. The result? A bit of a confused mess.

Unique UK weather

Rose's piece begins with a critical look at the Met Office's forecast for last weekend, saying the forecaster "wasn't at all sure how Britain's weather would turn out [on Sunday]."

To give Rose credit, he points out that the source of the uncertainty was a weather pattern known as a "trough disruption". Chief Met Office forecaster Nick Grahame  explained last week that it's hard to predict exactly which direction such weather systems will take.

"[T]here's a low pressure system over the west Atlantic and, on the face of it, appears to be heading our way. However, as it approaches our shores on Saturday night, forecast models are suggesting a large degree of uncertainty in terms of where it goes next."