Thank goodness April is over – it was a thoroughly cold, wet and grey month. Or was it really so dreadful? In fact, Met Office figures reveal something quite surprising, that April was completely normal. The UK had average temperatures, and even though rain seemed to crash down, these were typical April showers, not far off the month’s rainfall norm.

March was also thoroughly average in temperature, although it was slightly wetter than normal. Perhaps it has come as a shock to get back to the average again after years of record-breaking weather.

Does this return to normality mean that global warming has finished? In fact, temperatures across the world have dipped over the past few months thanks to La Niña, a cooling of the tropical seas in the Pacific. This cooling has tended to mask the trend in rising world temperatures caused by global warming. In fact, the Pacific yo-yos between cool La Niñas and warm El Niños, and over the next few months we can expect La Niña to die away and leave the world exposed to rising temperatures again.

When the next El Niño takes hold it will send global temperatures climbing even higher. This is why 1998 was the warmest year on record across the world, because of a powerful El Niño.