WHAT's going to happen to the climate over the next 10 years or so? Is it time to buy that air conditioner you considered during the last heatwave? Should you rip up your garden and replant it with drought-resistant plants, or can you expect more rain - perhaps even floods - in your part of world? The other possibility, of course, is that your local climate will change little in the near future.

On the one hand we have weather predictions for the next few days. On the other we have climate forecasts for the very distant future. But what happens in the middle? Why don't we have forecasts for, say, 2010 or 2018? Knowing how temperature and rainfall will change over the next few years would be invaluable to many people, from farmers to the tourism industry to those in charge of our water supplies.