Severn Trent Costain is strongly backing the warning from the Environment Agency of the need for businesses to prepare for future weather extremes. Managing Director, Wayne Earp said: “The Environment Agency assessment of the likely trend for more extreme weather in future is borne out by the events of 2012, when the country suffered both drought and flooding.

“There are a number of potential effects on businesses, ranging from vulnerability to flooding itself to serious water supply issues as declining river and groundwater levels make existing supplies problematic.”

A global temperature rise of 1.5C would be enough to start the melting of permafrost in Siberia, scientists warned on Thursday. Any widespread thaw in Siberia's permanently frozen ground could have severe consequences for climate change. Permafrost covers about 24% of the land surface of the northern hemisphere, and widespread melting could eventually trigger the release of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, which would have a massive warming effect.

The impact of climate change on local, national and global organisations and economies is growing. A paper published in CIWEM’s Water and Environment Journal this week says local authorities should be proactive in climate change adaptation and mitigation to avoid ever-increasing costs.

In a paper published in the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management’s (CWIEM) Water and Environment Journal earlier this week, M. Ncube et al. examined the impact of rainfall variability on municipalities’ water and energy demand in South African local governments.

Reforms aimed at rescuing the European Union's landmark carbon-cutting mechanism, the emissions trading scheme (ETS), are back on track after attacks from business lobbyists and Conservatives.

A key committee of the European parliament judged in favour of the reforms on Tuesday, meaning that they will move on to be debated by the whole parliament, probably in April. However, it was unclear on Tuesday whether there would be an additional stage of scrutiny before the parliamentary vote, during which time the measures could be watered down.

Investors and a group of large businesses have urged the EU to revive its flagging emissions trading scheme (ETS), ahead of a key vote in the European parliament next week.

Shell, General Electric, Kingfisher, Unilever and EDF were among more than 30 large companies signing up to call for reforms that would raise carbon prices and restore confidence in the scheme, which is meant to cut the EU's carbon output. The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), which represents investors and asset managers worth €7.5 trillion, also joined the call for reform.

One of the UK's leading universities will on Monday launch a new research programme aiming to help investors identify assets that could be left "stranded" by climate change, declining resources and the emergence of new green technologies.

Backed by HSBC, Aviva, WWF-UK and Climate Change Capital, the four-year University of Oxford research programme is attempting to flag up high-carbon sectors and assets that could be dramatically devalued or written off by the continuing shift towards a greener economy.

John Kerry's confirmation as secretary of state on Tuesday installs a veteran climate champion in a pole position for Barack Obama's second term.

Kerry, who describes himself as a "passionate advocate", sailed through his confirmation on Tuesday afternoon, a legacy of his nearly three decades in the Senate.

Now campaigners hope Kerry will help deliver a win on their signature issue: blocking the Keystone XL pipeline from the Alberta tar sands.

Lord Stern, author of the government-commissioned review on climate change that became the reference work for politicians and green campaigners, now says he underestimated the risks, and should have been more "blunt" about the threat posed to the economy by rising temperatures.

In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Stern, who is now a crossbench peer, said: "Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then."