YOU asked your interviewees on 20 July ”if they believe the freak weather is a result of climate change”. That’s difficult to answer unless you have some idea of what’s going on elsewhere on the planet. And the news from there is that Britain isn’t the only place suffering freak weather.

Big news has been the drought in the USA, which has devastated crops of corn and soya, and is likely to push up bread prices worldwide in the near future.

It’s also worth knowing what’s going on above our heads.

The troposphere is getting warmer, the stratosphere above it cooler.

The best explanation (though I don’t expect it to convince your regular panel of climate deniers) is a greenhouse effect caused by excessive emissions of carbon dioxide.

In between the two ‘spheres’ is the zone inhabited by the jet streams, which now feature occasionally in weather forecasts on TV because they have a dominant influence on long-term spells of weather, and have started to behave in unusual and unpredictable ways.

Not so surprising if the temperature difference across this zone is increasing.

So a long-term wet spell in the UK and a long-term dry spell in the USA are effects of unusual behaviour of the jet streams. That is their connection with climate change.

Eric Alexander, Dovecot Road, High Wycombe