Scientists 'meet over odd weather'

Around 20 of the UK's top climate scientists are to meet at the Met Office headquarters in Exeter to discuss Britain's "unusual" weather patterns.

They will try to identify the factors that caused the heavy snow in the winter of 2010 to 2011; the long, wet summer of 2012 and the spring of 2013, which was the coldest on record in 50 years.

The Met Office hopes the meeting will identify new priorities for research.

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins told the Today programme's Justin Webb that "we don't go into this saying lets prove this is climate change, we go into it trying to understand what's going on".

He explained that "the last ten years has produced some quite interesting weather for scientists to look at" and admitted that "it has been a bit strange".

When asked why the weather not been congruous with previous weather recordings, he said " quite honestly we don't know".

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday 18 June 2013.