Climate Threat Global Challenges

Scientists Warn: Get Ready for Years of Deadly Heat

Scientists are warning of several more years of record-breaking heat that are pushing the Earth towards increasingly deadly, hotter, more uncomfortable, and extreme weather conditions.

This is shown in the five-year forecast from the global weather organization WMO and the UK's national weather service Met Office, which was released on Wednesday, reports AP.

There is an 80 percent probability that the world will break another record for average annual temperatures in the next five years, the organizations say.

It is also even more likely that global temperatures will exceed the international temperature limit of 1.5 degrees.

- It will expose more people than ever to the risk of severe heat waves, leading to more deaths and serious health effects, says Richard Betts, head of climate research at the UK Met Office, to the AP.

Study: NATO's Armaments Make Emissions Shine

Global armaments threaten climate goals. The planned armaments of NATO countries alone are expected to increase greenhouse gas emissions by 200 million tons a year, a new study shows according to The Guardian.

- There is a real concern about how we prioritize short-term security and sacrifice long-term security, says Ellie Kinney, researcher at the Conflict and Environment Observatory and co-researcher of the study.

This in itself is likely to lead to increased violence, as climate change is already directly or indirectly fueling conflicts, according to the study. In the Darfur region of Sudan, battles over resources have erupted after a long drought, and as natural resources are exposed in a melting Arctic, geopolitical tensions are increasing.

40 percent of the world's glaciers doomed to melt

Almost 40 percent of the world's glaciers will melt due to global warming. This is according to a new study in the journal Science, according to The Guardian.

If warming reaches 2.7 degrees, which it is currently on track to do, the figure will rise to 75 percent.

The massive melting will raise sea levels and drive mass migration. Billions of people currently depend on meltwater from glaciers to grow their crops, according to the researchers.

“The choices we make today will reverberate for centuries and determine how much of the glaciers can be preserved,” says Harry Zekollari of the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, one of the authors.

The glaciers in the western United States and Canada are particularly vulnerable – 75 percent are already doomed to disappear. In the high Asian mountain ranges, the glaciers are more resilient, but they too will shrink significantly.