Extremes are to be expected … what should trouble politicians is the apparently inexorable increase in severity and frequency

In the Climate Games, a number of contenders have already achieved personal bests. California is in the deepest drought for more than a century. The United States began the year with a record fall in the mercury, blizzard conditions in the north-east and a world-class anomaly in the state of Michigan, where, to the joy of headline writers, a small town called Hell froze over.

Australia in 2013 had its hottest year ever – and its hottest summer – and conditions this January were near record levels too. Oslo recorded its warmest Christmas: life-threatening forest fires broke out in the Norwegian Arctic.

England experienced its heaviest winter rainfall and its most damaging floods in 248 years. In north-eastern Greenland, January temperatures were anomalously high: on average 6.24C up on normal for the month.

Researchers last month also claimed a record for glacial acceleration: Jakobshavn Isbrae, a massive river of ice that runs from the Greenland icecap to one of the country’s Atlantic ocean fjords, has accelerated fourfold since 1997, and its summer rate of flow is an unprecedented 46 metres a day.

In this season of extremes the Earth’s atmosphere during January was, according to US scientists, warmer than normal.

Extremes are to be expected: any average is the sum of accumulated extremes. What should trouble the politicians is the apparent, and apparently inexorable, increase in the severity and the frequency of extremes.

Even before 1988, when global warming first became an item on the international agenda, climate scientists had begun to warn that, were average temperatures to rise with greenhouse gas levels, then extremes would become more damaging, more frequent, or both.

Since then, the warnings have multiplied, and intensive and sustained research by scientists in Britain, Europe, China, Australia and the US has told the same story: if there are no steps to reduce greenhouse emissions, then average global temperatures will continue to rise, and extremes of heat and cold, of evaporation and precipitation, will continue. And yet each extreme triggers new energy demand.

Sea defences, river dredging and the pumping of water from flooded farmland all consume expensive energy. The alternative is catastrophic loss; by 2100, according to a European study this month, without adaptation, storm surge damage to coastal cities could total $100 trillion a year.

In a blizzard, cities and homesteads have no choice but to turn up the thermostat. As summer temperatures soar, so will the demand for air conditioning: the US today uses about as much electricity to cool its offices, malls and homes as it did in the 1950s to supply the needs of the whole nation for all purposes.

In a cycle of positive feedback, demand for fossil fuels will continue to grow, and temperatures will continue to rise.

The Arctic is melting: by 2100, under a business-as-usual scenario, Arctic average temperatures are predicted to rise by up to 11C. Glaciers in the northern hemisphere are, in most cases, in retreat. Since ice – which reflects sunlight back into space – is part of the planet’s insulation system, that too will feed back into rising temperatures.

With each 1C rise, the capacity of the atmosphere to carry water vapour also increases, so flood, drought and catastrophic windstorm are likely to become either more frequent, more extreme, or both.

More investment in fossil fuel energy seems to promise ever-greater problems.

When they stock fields or sow crops, farmers take a bet that conditions will be normal: when they are not, farmers lose, and so do consumers. Food security is at risk, and not just because of flooding on the Somerset Levels.

Energy supply too, will become increasingly precarious, both at the strategic and the immediate level: it is a fair bet that blackouts will become more frequent, more widespread and more prolonged.

In the downhill race towards climate change, it will also be increasingly difficult for would-be host nations to be sure of snow and ice for future Winter Olympics. But by then, that will be the least of the world’s problems.

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