For those of the fortunate Kirtonians who got to see J.S.Bach's St John's Passion at Crediton Parish Church in February directed by Tina Guthrie. There are several wonderful and moving arias in 'The Passion' and for me the standout was the Soprano aria 'Zerfliesse, mein Herze' 'Dissolve, my heart, in floods of tears to honour the Almighty.'

Flooding of a different sort, wildfires and extreme storms are becoming more common and more intense as climate change with increasing work temperatures affect our once stable weather systems.

The UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency - ARIA - has awarded £81m to 27 teams (including one at the University of Exeter) to fund ways to identify signals that give early warnings of tipping points. A tipping point is a threshold in a climate system that leads to unstoppable changes - i.e. changes that us humans can no longer do anything about.

"In a similar way to how we use monitoring stations to detect and warn for tsunamis, we're aiming to establish networks of climate monitoring systems to detect early signs of critical shifts in our climate," said Gemma Bale and Sarah Bohndiek, the ARIA programme directors.

The programme focuses on two that are at high risk of being triggered. The collapse of the Greenland ice sheet which would lead to huge rise in sea levels and the subsequent flooding for millions of people living in low lying areas - such as London. The other focus is the collapse of the North Atlantic Ocean currents which would generate global changes in climate - and cause temperatures in Northern Europe - which of course includes us - to plummet, with clear implications for farming and food production amongst other things.

So what sort of aria needs to be sung to reduce the chances of the tipping points being reached? Despite the few climate change deniers who seem to have the loudest voices we can all 'do our bit' by reducing even more our use of fossil fuels as individuals, nationally and globally - despite the odds.