Long-term weather forecasting is always challenging, but extreme heat in the north Pacific has the potential to affect the UK and Europe in the coming months too.
That’s because of relationships between weather in different parts of the world known as teleconnections.
“Although the current warm conditions are located in the north Pacific, these can generate wave motions in the atmosphere that can alter our weather downstream into the north Atlantic and into Europe,” said Prof Maycock.
“That can tend to favour high-pressure conditions over the continent, which brings us more of an influence from the Arctic, where we have colder air,” she added.
“That can be drawn over Europe and bring us colder weather in early winter.”
A colder outcome is by no means certain, as this is a complex area of science. Several other weather patterns also affect UK winters, which are typically getting milder with climate change.
And a warm north Pacific appears to have different effects later in the winter, favouring milder and wetter conditions in some parts of Europe.