While the view that ‘we’re all in it together’ is wishful thinking at the political level, it certainly is bang-on for a world climate that is now warming faster than it has done for millions of years.

None of us are immune from what is happening elsewhere on the globe and here in the UK we are not just the audience at a climate change performance – we are part of the seven billion chorus on the main stage.

There are numerous examples of regional records or changing conditions somewhere in the world that have knock-on effects in more distant parts.

So it’s likely that the changes that helped make the winter flooding in the Somerset Levels and Thames Valley so severe can be traced back to warming that has occurred this century in two very distant oceans, the Arctic and the Pacific.

The world pattern of winds depends on such changes in temperature, and the balance between them is proving to be rather important.

We have been accustomed to a south-westerly air stream, from the sub-tropics, giving us our mild, and wet weather, with the occasional snow from polar air coming south in winter. The dividing line between the two has been the high altitude Jet Stream which normally meanders vigorously round the world from west to east to the north of Scotland.

Recently, these meanders have become slower and more pronounced, often staying in the same place for weeks on end, and this is because of the much lower gradient in temperature between the poles and further south.

All the evidence is that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet as the ice melts, and so the Jet Stream gets stuck to give a record cold winter in the United States and a mild, very wet and violently windy one over western Europe.

Record wind speeds and record low pressure systems were directed towards the south of the UK instead of passing to the north. They were even more destructive than expected because the lack of Atlantic hurricanes in the Caribbean meant far more energy was available from the warm water to batter us as it wasn’t all used up in violating Florida.

Next winter might again be as wet and windy as there are signs that the famous El Nino warming of the eastern Pacific is about to take over later this year. This normally means even fewer Atlantic hurricanes so we may have the same problem repeated next winter.

We live on a lively and interconnected planet, and we all have a responsibility not to make matters worse worldwide.