No proof that wild weather signifies a warming planet. But don't bet against it

It was 42 degrees Celsius in St Louis, Missouri, last weekend, about the same as in Saudi Arabia. Along the US Atlantic coast, it was cooler, but not much: 41degrees in Washington DC, just short of the city's all-time record. And scores have already died from the heat wave.

In Britain, it was incredibly wet. Almost 6cm of rain fell on Saturday in parts of southern England, and there were at one point over 20 flood warnings and 100 flood alerts in effect. The wettest April ever was followed by the wettest June (more than double the average rainfall), and July has started the same way.

Russia had its hottest summer ever in 2010, with peat wildfires raging out of control, but this summer it's wet in Russia too. Last Friday, an astonishing 28cm of rain fell overnight in the Krasnodar region in southern Russia, and flash floods killed more than 150 people.

It is a big planet, and some local record for hottest, coldest, wettest or driest is being broken somewhere or other almost every day. But these are records being broken over very large areas, in regions where records go back a long time.

As Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev said: 'No one can remember such floods in our history. There was nothing of the kind for the last 70 years.'

There are very unusual events happening in winter too: by January 10, only 14.7per cent of the US was covered by snow, compared with 61.7per cent at the same time in 2011. And hundreds died in a cold wave in northern India the previous January.

One could go on, enumerating comparably extreme weather events in the southern hemisphere in the past couple of years. But that would just be more impressionistic evidence, and no more convincing statistically. The events are too few, and the time period is too short. But it does feel like something is going on, doesn't it?