why can't we predict the temperature in Birmingham in 3 weeks time but we can predict how much the world will warm in three decades if we don't slow down our emissions of greenhouse gases in the early 1970s John Sawyer at the Met Office predicted that the world would warm by 0.6 Celsius by the year 2000 because of human emissions of carbon dioxide given that this was back when accurately predicting the weather more than 2 or 3 days ahead was incredibly challenging he was very close to the mark these days our weather forecasts have improved but they are still limited to one or two weeks our climate projections meanwhile go beyond the end of the century and that's because there are important differences between weather forecasts and climate projections to find out more check out our latest video uploaded on the Met Office learnabout Weather Channel