Just recently, the coast of Myanmar was hit by one of the strongest cyclones ever seen in the northern Indian Ocean. A record heatwave spread across Southeast Asia, while the mercury in Beijing and Portland, Oregon, rose to the mid-30s Celsius (mid-90s Fahrenheit).
With temperatures in Europe increasing twice as fast as the global average, parts of Spain are turning arid decades earlier than expected. A vast Antarctic glacier may be susceptible to collapse far sooner than anyone realized. The speed of change is head-spinning.
Scientists have spent decades batting away accusations from denialists that they were exaggerating the risks of warming. Now they’re facing the opposite problem. "Some of the impacts of climate change are playing out faster and with a greater magnitude than we predicted,” Michael E. Mann, a climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the U.K.’s Channel 4 News during Europe’s summer heatwave last year.