BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Britain is an island in the midst of an often stormy sea, but that fact doesn't explain the relentless rains that have brought the nation's worst floods in a half century, and some wonder if there is a link to global warming.

    "We can't link any particular event to climate change," said Jay Larimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch for the U.S. National Climatic Data Center.

    Jeffrey Yin, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) explained changes and patterns have to be studied for long periods of time before they can be connected to something like global warming.

    "I would want to see sort of a sustained pattern over a longer period of time, at least 10 to 20 years," Yin told LiveScience. "The issue with extreme kinds of events is that because they're rare, it's hard to say statistically that there's been a shift or a change."

    Long periods of rain like this are nothing new and take place when certain air patterns persist and keep strong low-pressure systems, associated with heavy rain, over an area for days or weeks on end, Larimore explained.

    But even though deluges will happen, global warming will increase the likelihood of their happening by changing the environment, said NCAR climatologist Kevin Trenberth.

    "In particular, the water vapor in the atmosphere has increased about 4 percent over the oceans since 1970 on average, and this leads to heavier rainfall events by about double that amount," Trenberth said in an email. "This is consistent with the kinds of things we expect from global climate change warming."

    Scientists predict that extreme weather events like the floods in Britain will become more frequent in places all over the world -- China too has seen intense rains and flooding this summer.

    (Agencies)