A team of 60 international scientists report that by early 2028 society will have emitted enough greenhouse gases that the Earth will be pretty much locked into hitting the internationally agreed upon preferred limit for global warming. That is less than three years away and a year sooner than what the same team calculated in 2024. The threshold is when the world will be committed to 1.5 degrees Celsius of long-term warming since preindustrial times. One scientist and co-author of the report says things aren't just getting worse, they are getting worse faster. The Thursday report's lead author calls it a depressing picture.

A new study says climate change has tripled the frequency of atmospheric wave events linked to extreme summer weather in the last 75 years. And the research indicates that may explain why long-range computer forecasts keep underestimating the surge in killer heat waves, droughts and floods. Monday's study says that in the 1950s, Earth averaged about one extreme weather-inducing planetary wave event a summer. But now it's getting about three each summer. Planetary waves are connected to 2021’s deadly and unprecedented Pacific Northwest heat wave and wildfires, the 2010 Russian heatwave and Pakistan flooding and the 2003 killer European heatwave.