Climate change is a natural phenomena that has been happening since the Earth was created approximately 4.6 billion years ago but recently there has been unprecedented warming.
The effects of climate change can be seen in our every day lives. Weather patterns are becoming increasingly disrupted and unpredictable and significant warming trends have been seen over the last century. During the last 40 years, the UK's winters have grown warmer, with heavier bursts of rain. The summers are growing drier and hotter - one of the starkest changes over the last 200 years is our summers have become drier causing widespread water shortages.
Many gardeners are finding their lawns need mowing in winter and snowdrops are blooming before Christmas, as winters grow milder; with fewer frosts, cold snaps and snowfalls. Spring is arriving earlier and autumn later - the growing season for plants and crops in the UK has increased by about a month since 1900.
However flooding is a looming threat over much of the country, particularly in the central region. Severe storms and rising seas, some 10cm higher than sea level in 1900, are slowly eating away at our coastline. As rainfall comes down in deluges, rivers are bursting their banks more often, with flash floods becoming a more common occurrence. The floods experienced in the UK during the summer of 2007 were the result of the heaviest rainfall since records began.