The heavy rain that has fallen over England in the last couple of days is apparently one of the nasty signs that global warming is sending us to demonstrate its presence.

While the Southern and Eastern Europe are currently confronted with un precedented scorching heat, drought and little hope of seeing the wildfires stopped, Britain has seen in some of the most devastating floods in the modern era.

The nightmarish rainfall that has left hundreds of thousands stranded and panicked, waiting for authorities to save them from their flooded homes, has been caused by the rapid climate change that has also provided us this year with the warmest winter in more than a century.

A study to be published in the next issue of renowned British magazine Nature (but still under embargo concerning specific details) has finally established a strong link between the increase in rainfall over the Northern hemisphere (especially Canada, parts of Russia and of course Scandinavia and Britain) and the industrial activities that are producing the noxious greenhouse gases.

Scientists have long speculated upon the influence greenhouse gases have on global warming, but few have concentrated on the link between rainfall patterns in the last century and the amounts of CO2 emanated in the atmosphere (which cause the greenhouse effect).

The new study, which is the result of the cooperation between several British climate-research institutes, is providing almost undeniable proof that the recent floods in the UK are the consequence of shifts in the jetstream, the high-level airflow that brings depressions eastwards across the Atlantic. The circulation of the airflow is heavily influenced by the global warming, which scientists blame for the current and future “extreme rainfall events”.

Yes, that means we’ll see more of these coming in the near future and things might actually get worse. Using powerful supercomputers, British scientists have come to the conclusion that the overall amount of rainfall has increased over the past century in certain parts of the world (northern Europe, Canada, northern Russia) and has decreased in others (sub-Saharan Africa, Southern India and Southeast Asia).

The changes "may have already had significant effects on ecosystems, agriculture and human regions that are sensitive to changes in precipitation, such as the Sahel'', warns the paper.

One source familiar with the study's conclusions, cited by The Independent, said: "What this does is establish for the first time that there is a distinct 'human fingerprint' in the changes in precipitation patterns ­ the increases in rainfall ­ observed in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, which includes Britain.”

"That means, it is not just the climate's natural variability which has caused the increases, but there is a detectable human cause ­ climate change, caused by our greenhouse gas emissions. The 'human fingerprint' has been detected before in temperature rises, but never before in rainfall. So this is very significant.

"Some people would argue that you can't take a single event and pin that on climate change, but what happened in Britain last Friday fits quite easily with these conclusions. It does seem to have a certain resonance with what they're finding in this research."