“Climate change has already happened,” says Dr Mike Rivington, one of the scientists behind a pair of new reports into the recent past and future of Scotland's climate.

Among the shifts he is referring to is a change amount of preciptation. Increases in Scotland's winter rainfall, for instance, have already exceeded amounts projected for 2050.

Climate change has already happened. It is happening and will continue to happen – not just in Scotland, but across the world. The question is not whether it happens, but how much it does. Reducing it is, of course, as Dr Rivington says, a matter of “drastically cutting our burning of fossil fuels”.

That message is not new. But the surprise, for the James Hutton Institute scientists who have created the two reports (titled Climate Trends and Future Projections in Scotland and Climate Extremes in Scotland) has been the speed of change.

It is, as such, one of an increasing number of other reports, globally, that tell us a similar story: some of the models predicting climate change impacts have underestimated its speed.

In the Hutton reports, we find that February observed temperatures have already increased to be at the 'lower end of the 12 climate projections' used in the study for the 2020-2049 period. This means that we........

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