This is the important message to take away from Mozambique, or indeed from any other extreme weather event, such as the heavy rainfalls in Venezuela before Christmas or the windstorms in France after Christmas. We are running massive risks by altering the climate of our planet in ways we do not fully understand, let alone are able to predict with confidence. And the longer we continue to rely on a carbon-based energy economy, the greater these risks will be. Gambling with our climate may be acceptable to those of us living in affluent societies in the north, reckoning that we can adapt or buy our way out of climate trouble, but this gambling mentality is not one that would find many takers in Mozambique this week. The annual mean temperature in central England for 2000 is about 1.5C above the 1961-90 average.
Conditions are now warm enough for malaria-carrying mosquitoes to survive in southern England.
British songbirds are nesting, on average, two weeks earlier than they were 10 years ago. Dr Mike Hulme is reader in climatology at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.