The government’s UK Climate Impacts Programme has produced a number of ‘scenarios’ that help us to understand likely changes to our climate in the future. For more detail please access UKCIP.

Put simply, we can expect summers to become hotter and drier on average, and winters to be milder and wetter. The overall amount of annual rainfall is not predicted to change much, but more of it will be delivered in heavy storms. Extreme weather events of all kinds will become more common, and we will have to live with droughts, wildfires, floods, storms and high winds.

It’s tempting to think that an average temperature rise of a couple of degrees will mean that Staffordshire will acquire a climate similar to that of Spain or Portugal. It won’t, because the higher temperatures will put more energy into the atmosphere, generating storms and unpredictable weather. But even if our summers do become hotter and drier, will this be a good thing?

Mediterranean cultures have developed to adapt to hot weather, so the siesta is commonplace. Because people need to go home at lunchtime to sleep, housing has been built close to city centres, and commuting is relatively uncommon. Imagine the results as people try to leave central Birmingham for a few hours, every working day.

As another example, our sewer systems were all built on the assumption that there would be a regular supply of rainfall to keep things flowing. Regular and prolonged droughts could make our towns and cities unpleasant places to live and work.

Having said this, Staffordshire is unlikely to be as seriously affected as the south-east of England, and Britain will fare better than much of Europe. A rise in average global temperatures of 1°C could have unpleasant implications for us, but life could still go on here, and the county could become a popular place to live and do business.

In contrast, the western USA would be suffering perennial drought which may well devastate agriculture across parts of Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma. Changes in global monsoon patterns will cause damaging flash-flood rainfall in the Sahel region of Africa, interspersed with periods of intensely hot drought conditions. Half a million people across the world will become climate change refugees because of sea level rise. The global economic impacts of climate change are likely to have a bigger impact on Staffordshire than the weather itself.