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Devastating extreme weather including recent flooding in England, Australia‘s hottest year on record and the US being hit by a polar vortex have a “silver lining” of boosting climate change to the highest level of politics and reminding politicians that climate change is not a partisan issue, according to the UN’s climate chief.

Christiana Figueres said that it was amoral for people to look at climate change from a politically partisan perspective, because of its impact on future generations.

The “very strange” weather experienced across the world over the last two years was a sign “we are [already] experiencing climate change,” the executive secretary of the UN climate secretariat told the Guardian.

The flooding of thousands of homes in England because of the wettest winter on record has brought climate change to the forefront of political debate in the UK. The prime minister, David Cameron, when challenged by Labour leader, Ed Miliband, on his views on man-made climate change and having climate change sceptics in his cabinet, said last week: “I believe man-made climate change is one of the most serious threats that this country and this world faces.”

Climate change was barely mentioned at all in the 2012 US election battle until superstorm Sandy struck New York, prompting the city’s then mayor, Michael Bloomberg, to endorse Barack Obama’s candidacy because he would “lead on climate change.”