Britain will bake - then freeze

CLIMATE

Britons can look forward to increasingly warmer weather for the next 50 years. But the Earth is likely to cool over the next 10,000 years, and in the long term Britain may have to contend with a another ice age, say experts at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

The predictions come in a new book on British weather which commemorates 25 years of the university's Climatic Research Unit. Editors Mike Hulme and Elaine Barrow say they have attempted to record the changing British climate from before the last Ice Age.

The British climate is getting warmer and the last 50 years represent the warmest period since records began, it says.

Climates of the British Isles: Past, Present and Future, edited by Mike Hulme and Elaine Barrow, published by Routledge, pounds 65 hardback, pounds 18 paperback.