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Obviously that's true to an extent. But Nick Reynard, an expert in the science of flood hazards at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), says the translation of rainfall into floods is "non-linear". That is, a small amount of extra rainfall in some places can lead to large floods, while in others, where the capacity to absorb the rain is greater, even a large increase in rainfall might not lead to floods at all.

"In the northwest, where the recent floods have been, most of the catchments [areas] are neutral – they respond relatively linearly to changes in rainfall," he says. "But saying rainfall is going to increase therefore flooding is going to increase, broadly that's true, but there's a lot of detail within that."