Anyone who has switched on the news even briefly this year will no doubt have seen scenes of extreme flooding occurring in all corners of the globe. But are these events getting more frequent and more severe or are we just becoming more aware of them?
In this episode of BBC Science Focus Prof Trevor Hoey, a hydrologist based at Brunel University of London explains the various climate mechanisms driving these extreme weather events, how counterintuitively severe droughts are being caused by the same processes and he also details some of the measures we can take to minimise the damage these events cause.