Why are we seeing such brutal temperatures?

Most climate scientists say the answer is climate change.

The British Climate Office estimates that the extreme heat we are seeing has become ten times more likely due to climate change, the

reports .

People are being warned that temperatures can pose a danger to anyone's life and not only to the healthy, Telegrafi reports.

Now remember, this is happening when average world temperatures have risen just over 1 degree Celsius before many parts of the world industrialized.

A degree doesn't sound like much, does it?

But we are living in the hottest period in 125,000 years, according to the UN's climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

We know what's behind it – greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which trap heat in our atmosphere.

They have helped push the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to the highest levels in 2 million years, according to the IPCC.

So where is our climate going?

The objective set by the United Nations is to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

It says it must avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change.

To do this, emissions must have peaked by 2025 – yes, in just two and a half years.

CO2 emissions from energy increased by 6 percent in 2021 to 36.3 billion tons – the highest level ever, the International Energy Agency estimates.

They practically need to be halved by 2030 – we need a minimum reduction of 43 percent by the end of this decade, according to the IPCC.

Then the world must reduce emissions to zero by 2050. This means reducing greenhouse gases as much as possible and finding ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to make up for what remains.

It is a great challenge – many believe the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.

Remember that big UN conference in Glasgow last year?

If all the promises made by governments there were actually implemented, then we would be looking at temperatures rising by around 2.4 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

But the truth is that even if we succeed in reducing emissions to that truly ambitious target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, summers will continue to get hotter, the Telegraph reports.

"In a few decades this could actually be a pretty cool summer," says Professor Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London.

We should expect longer and longer heatwaves in the future, says Professor Nigel Arnell, a climate scientist at Reading University.

We'll see more heat health alerts, more heat stress days — days when it's too hot to work — and harmful heat extremes to grow, he warns.

So what is the UK doing about it?

Nowhere near enough, is the grim conclusion of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the government's climate change advisers.

In a report on Britain's progress towards net zero, the CCC warned that its government's current policies are unlikely to do the job.

He said that the government has set many objectives and pursued many policies, but warns that there is "little evidence" that these goals will be realized.

And the country is not doing enough to prepare for the more frequent and intense heat waves that climate change will bring.

Heatwaves caused another 2,000 deaths in 2020, according to the UK Health Safety Agency.

This figure is likely to triple in the coming decades without government action, according to Baroness Brown, deputy chair of the Climate Change Committee.

"We've been telling the government for over 10 years that we are completely unprepared in Britain for the really hot weather we're seeing now," she says - "especially the extreme heat that many people are experiencing in their homes."

It's a 'disgrace' that people are dying from the heat - or the cold - in the UK," says Professor Hannah Cloke of the University of Reading.

Most buildings and infrastructure in Britain are not designed to cope with the kind of temperatures we are seeing this week and much more needs to be done to adapt them, she says.

"We have made great strides in predicting extreme weather and climate in recent years.

Now we need the systems so that people and governments can act on the warnings we can give, be it three hours, three days or three decades in advance," she concluded.

Otherwise, Britain is facing the highest temperatures ever, where they reached 40 degrees Celsius yesterday.