Returning to British suburbia from the Brazilian Amazon is always disconcerting, but it has been doubly weird in the past few days because the London commuter belt has been inundated with volumes of rain that normally belong in the tropics.

Mini-tornadoes, flash floods and the dumping of a month’s worth of rain in a single day have flooded transport hubs, high street pubs, and the shrubs of semidetached homes.

If that sounds unnatural, it is. This weather does not belong in the safe, predictable, home counties of England. At least, not in a normal state of affairs.

But ever-greater combustion of fossil fuels has turned the world’s climate on its head. In the past week, the northern latitudes are behaving like the equatorial margins…