Long-range forecasting from the Met Office has detailed how climate change will lead to increasingly extreme weather.

Torrential rainfall and maximum temperatures will rise, placing challenges on health, infrastructure and services.

Professor Jason Lowe is head of the UK Climate Projections programme for the Met Office.

He said: "Some of the most severe consequences of climate change will come from an increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events.

"We know that on average the UK is projected to become hotter and drier in summer, and warmer and wetter in winter – this tells us a lot.

"But for those assessing climate change risk it's important to better understand how extreme weather events are likely to change too."

Extreme weather predictions

To highlight the scale of change across the UK, the Met Office has published data on how maximum temperatures and one and five-day rainfall totals may rise in future, which you can see above.

We have already seen some extreme weather this year. There was a heat wave across two weekends in late July and early August, with temperatures hitting 36C in Richmond.

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A few days later, the weather broke and giant hail stones rained down from the sky in a huge flash storm.

Implications for flood defences

Dr Simon Brown was one of the key scientists working on the project.

He added: "If you're designing a flood-relief scheme or building a railway, for example, you can't assume that the climate will remain the same because we know that it is already changing.

"The things you want to know will be how much heat or rainfall will my project have to cope with and that is what our projections will do."

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