Big weather has always existed and, even in temperate Scotland, there have always been floods and storms. So, naturally, whenever there’s the suggestion that a drought or a flood is a feature of climate change, someone will say it’s just the weather. Rain happens.

And on one level they would be right. The dramatic recent pictures of the Spey floodplain covered in water reflect nothing new to Scotland. One of the most catastrophic floods ever to take place in the UK, nicknamed the Muckle Spate, assaulted Speyside in 1829 when the Dee rose and took out 22 bridges and made 600 families homeless.

As yet, no scientist has crunched the figures on this recent dramatic storm to give an expression of how much more likely it was made by climate change, but there are multiple studies and reports that tell us that globally, and locally, more extreme rain and flooding will come as global temperatures rise.

Take, for instance, the attribution map produced by Carhon Brief which showed that of 126 rainfall or flooding events, 56% "human activity had made the event more likely or more severe".

Or the 2018 study by Oxford University which showed that "climate change increases the probability of heavy rains in Northern England/Southern Scotland like those of storm Desmond".

READ MORE: Scotland floods: From A83 to swamped crops, what to learn?

READ MORE: Scotland's marine heatwave explained: from data to jellyfish

Or the study published earlier this year, based on satellite data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, which found that, globally, the intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years - and predicted that “everything’s going to get amplified on both ends of the dry-wet spectrum”.

Most of these extreme rains happened in sub-Saharan Africa. But it’s not only sub-Saharan Africa that is affected - and even if it was that would be no reason not to care. We also know that Scotland is getting wetter. A UK Climate Change Committee report, for instance, notes: “Over the last 30 years, Scottish winters have become 5% wetter. ”

We are better now at dealing with floods than they were in 1829. When, more recently, the rains of December 2015 and January 2016 made the River Dee burst its banks, Professor George Fleming described the deluge as the “Muckle Muckle Spate”.

Though it was deemed an exceptional flood with only between a “one-in-500 and a one-in-1000-year return period", the damage was less than in 1829.

Sometimes people will use improvements in disaster management as a reason for not pushing hard on climate mitigation. They will say humans are getting better at dealing with extreme weather.

But the assumption that in the face of multiple threats, we will go on always being able to cope with disaster seems not just over-optimistic but smug. A bit of weather like this should be a reminder that climate change will bring more - and that what we do now in cutting emissions could help reduce that more.