it's the story of the week, and the challenge of our times — extreme weather is affecting millions around the globe. but scientists say we already have the technology needed to solve to the climate crisis. we'll speak with one expert mapping the way to a net—zero future. hello i'm helena humphrey. around the globe, it's beenhot outside this week. in the us, a third of americans have been under extreme heat alerts. some places in europe experienced temperatures of 45 degrees celcius or 113 degrees fahrenheit. and the world meteorological organization is warning that the heatwave in europe could continue into august. night—time in europe and the us is not expected to bring

widespread relief either, as temperatures stay above 30c or 86 degrees fahrehneut in places including arizona and southern spain. georgina rannard from the bbc climate unit explains why scientists are worried about these temperatures. it's been days, now, of sweltering temperatures across the us, europe, and china, and while millions of people have struggled through this extreme heat, climate scientists have been poring over a run of broken climate records. they say the speed and the timing that these records have tumbled is unprecedented. now, while climate models are very good at forecasting long—term trends, experts say that some of these abnormalities were not expected. let's take a look at some of the broken records. injuly, the world recorded its hottest day on record. for decades, global average temperatures have been getting

higher and higher. then, onjuly 6 this year, the world reached higher than 17 celsius for the first time. in that week, that record was broken three times. now, 17 celsius might not sound like that much, but remember, this is the global average, and half of the world is in winter. scientists say that humans are 100% behind this upward trend in global temperatures. but it's notjust the land that's hot. let's look at this animation. what you can see here is the head growing in the world's oceans. this is the north atlantic, and an extraordinary amount of heat has been growing there. it's been described as an extreme heatwave experts. in some parts of it, its five degrees hotter than it should be. they can be like stepping into a hot tub. down hear you can see el nino, the world's most powerful naturally occurring climate fluctuation. it occurs every 2—7 years and when it does address a global temperatures. scientists are really

worried about what is happening here. they see it's unexpected, they've never seen it before, and they're trying to understand how it is linked to climate change. and there's another really worrying abnormality. for decades, the antarctic has been quite stable, and it hasn't shown the same effects of global warming as other parts of the ocean. this is where antarctic sea ice should be at this time of year in the winter, but at look where it is — 10% lower than average. scientists are really worried about this. they say it's fallen off a cliff. it could be down to climate change or it could be down to natural weather patterns. theyjust don't know and they're trying to find out more. now, this is really concerning and can seem really scary. scientists say we're not now at the stage of climate colla pse and this runaway global warming. they still say we have the solutions in time to create a liveable planet for most of us. our correspondents are on the ground in europe, asia and the us, and they've been reporting on how people in their parts of the world are being affected by climate change this week.

i'm carl nasman in washington, dc, and this heatwave has been hitting the united states for several weeks, now. in fact, at some points, around a third of the country has been dealing with dangerously high temperatures. we've seen cities breaking their all—time records in various different parts of the country. but one city in particular, phoenix, arizona, really shows not only how hot it's been, but how long it has been lasting. it set a record with at least 21 days above 110 fahrenheit — or 43 degrees celsius. it's not only been hot on land, but at sea. the waters around florida, at some point in the mid—90s fahrenheit — that's around the temperature of your bathtub. some experts worry that that could be harming wildlife and damaging coral reefs as well. scientists, of course, have been saying that these heat waves have been fuelled, at least in part, by climate change, becoming more frequent and more intense — and this heatwave is not done yet. we're expecting more triple—digit temperatures in the coming days,

as well as record highs. i'm azadeh moshiri in greece's capital, athens. thegreek prime minister has warned that the hard times are not over yet, and that's because it's sweltering hot here. many of the archaeological sites here in greece have decided to shut operations during the hottest hours. that includes the acropolis, behind me — it will be shut every day from noon until 5:30pm, untiltemperatures dissipate. countries in southern europe will experience the same thing. spain, italy, greece — all these places have been given weather alerts. and that means that southern europe is now feeling the real effects of climate change, which makes extreme weather more frequent and more severe. i'm jean mackenzie in seoul, and this week in asia, - we've had to contend _ with various weather extremes, from record heat inl china to flash floods here in south korea. last saturday, 14 people were tragically killed - in their cars when a major -

underpass was suddenly flooded. south korea is in the midst of its monsoon season, - but already this year it's - received more than the total amount of expected rainfall. china, india, and japan have also experienced torrential i rain, with millions of people . affected by floods, landslides, and power outages. south—eastern china _ was battered by a typhoon that saw nearly a quarter - of a million people displaced from their homes. while in the northeast of the country, china, | on monday, recorded its hottest temperature ever, 52.2 degreesi celsius. this is the most populated continent in the world, - home to about 4.4 billion - people, which makes it more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. - this extreme weather events can cause water shortages, - crop failures, and i help spread disease. asjean mckenzie mentioned, china experienced its highest temperature ever this week — 52.2 celsius

or 125 degrees fahrenheit. that formed an urgent backdrop for climate talks in beijing between us special climate envoyjohn kerry and his chinese counterpart. the two sides held hours of closed door meetings. they agreed to speak again in the future, but ultimately, the world's biggest carbon emitters failed to reach any new climate agreements in this round of talks. earlier, i spoke about the trip with david sandalow, a former us state department official. thank you for taking the time tojoin us here on the bbc, david sandalow. as we know, john kerry and his chinese counterparts held hours of talks but failed to come up with any new climate agreements. do you see that as a setback? absolutely not. this is the first time that secretary kerry had met with his counterpart in person in almost a year. i don't think it is an expectation of major breakthroughs or announcements. the good news is that normal climate diplomacy has been restored between

the two countries. there are a lot of difficult issues to be sorted out and the fact that the two negotiators are now able to meet is very important. they will get to work and deliver some announcements in the months ahead. but what does it say about the current state of the relationship that they weren't able to come up with anything concrete? well, the fact that they were able to come up with anything concrete in these meetings is no surprise. these, as ijust said, were the first meetings on a long time. more broadly the state of the relationship is extremely troubled. it is, i would say, greater tension than any time in almost half a century. that is complicating climate diplomacy. us and china have a great track record of working together on these issues. in 2014, president obama and president xi

entered into an agreement that made an important foundation for the paris agreement a year later. but it has got a lot more challenging in the past couple of years. the two countries need to find a way to overcome the geopolitical tensions and work together on these global issues such as climate change. but here's the question, right — does the world have the time, faced with the current climate challenges, to wait for diplomacy to as normal? challenges, to wait for diplomacy to resume as normal? we are under extreme time pressure. we are already seeing terrible consequences, just this month. today, as we speak, 80 million americans are under severe heat advisories. the city of phoenix, arizona, has had temperatures over 110 fahrenheit, about 44 celsius, every day for the past 21 days. and china actuallyjust recorded its warmest

temperature ever in a northern province. over, i think, over 52 celsius. so, no, the time pressure is enormous. we will have to work together on this. that does include diplomacy. diplomacy moves too slowly. these big global meetings which often involve the agreement of 150, 200 countries, that never happens quickly. but we need diplomats to get to work and to march forward as fast as we can. john kerry said there is a plan to see china reduce methane emissions from energy, agriculture, waste, and so on, how impactful you can they potentially be? it could be very impactful.

methane is an extremely important heat trapping gas. that could have beneficial short—term impacts. there have been three major sources — coal, oiland gas, and agriculture, and in other sectors there are enormous opportunities for trapping emissions. the chinese government is committed to releasing this plan. i hope that it does that soon and implements that very quickly. this took about a potential timeframe, then. how important you think it is or how likely do you think it is that is some code of agreement before the cop28 climate conference this year? i hope the two countries can get to an agreement. i think the two most likely places were to be announced would be in november at the apec summit, where it is possible that president biden and president xi will meet, or at cop28, the annual climate conference, this year

being held in dubai. let's talk about the issue that we are seeing of economic competition between these two superpowers, between the united states and china. do you think the fact that they are such entrenched rivals is also having a serious impact on the rest of the world as well? and are they really committed to giving up these emissions when competition is at stake here? i do think the tension between the us and china is making it more difficult to work together on climate change and i think that is the problem. and when i travel around the world, i often hear people say "can't the us and china work together on this issue? if they work together constructively it would send important signal and motivate action in countries around the world so i hope it can happen.

if they can't and we are facing a scenario where two of the biggest emitters simply can't make any meaningful progress on climate, ultimately, what does this mean for other countries? an important question you're asking and i think it is important to distinguish between what each country is doing domestically and then they work together. there has been important progress in the united states, there has been important progress in the united states in addressing climate change. we are in the united states we passed the most important legislation ever to address climate change, called the inflation reduction act, about a year ago, and that isjust one of many measures that president biden has taken to get the united states on historically positive because when it comes to climate change. in china, there are good developments, too. there are some bad developments, but in china the pace of developing solar power and wind power is extraordinary. six times more solar panels installed in china last year than in the united states. unfortunately at the same time there has also been

record approvals of coal plants in china and that is a serious problem for the global climate. david sandalow, former assistant secretary of state, for oceans, international and scientific affairs, now with the centre of global policy at columbia university, thank you for being with us. with attention focused on what climate change means for us, nature and animals can often be a forgotten casuality. these farms and stable in greece have been destroyed by recent wildfires sweeping the country. dr stephanie roe, lead scientist at the world wildlife fund, spoke with my colleague carl nasman about the impact on wildlife. thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, i want to start off by asking you about this latest ipcc synthesis report, it is essentially a report card for our planet. how does what we are seeing now with the

record—setting heatwave fit in with the science that was released in this report back in march? thanks for having me. it was released in march of this year. essentially it was a report card, the fact that we are way off track from limiting warming to 1.5 degrees which was the global target that was set in the paris agreement, and essentially what it said was that we are now experiencing 1.1 degrees above preindustrial temperatures and with that level of warming we are already including extreme weather events which we are seeing play at on our television screens and experiencing daily today. and so i think one of the main findings was that the models have done a good job tracking warming over time, but what is surprising is in fact the impacts are happening much faster and at a higher magnitude than was originally predicted, and so events like extreme weather events are occurring at lower global warming levels than originally assessed back when the last ipcc report assessment

came out in 2014. so these temperatures we are seeing right now, that is even more extreme than what some scientists were anticipating? yes. so they are happening faster and at higher magnitude than originally assessed. wow. we were talking about these record bridges and how they are affecting humans, what about the effect on wildlife? you are with world wildlife fund, how are you —— how concerned are you about the effects on animals? climate changes affecting everyone across the planet including all living ecosystems and wildlife. and so we are seeing massive impacts in terrestrial ecosystems, in our freshwater ecosystems, and in fact it is already seeing the first impacts of extinctions due to climate change.

these impacts we are seeing are irreversible, and the continuing increases of temperatures that are projected over the next coming decades is expected to increase 3— four times the impacts we are seeing today. when we see these kind of temperatures that happened and they peak and may last for a long time, how are animals able to adapt to these high temperatures? or are they? we are seeing two things. one is that climate change is happening at such a fast rate that it prevents us and animals from adapting to them. so we are seeing that half of the animals and species, plants, etc that were assessed in the ipcc report have shifted either paul woods or are increasing their elevation to increase liveable conditions. —— polewards.

we are seeing a massive shift in where species are distributed around the planet, and their capacity to adapt to it really depends on whether or not they can move. and their vulnerability to climate change, in other words, if they are an endemic species or a species only found in a specific region of the planet, and it is hard for them to move, then they are disproportionately impacted. similarly, immunities and people who are more vulnerable, and have much less capacity to adapt to climate change, a much more disproportionately affected by climate change. you touched on this, but isn'tjust temperatures we seeing on land which are extremely warm right now, it is also within the oceans and our marine life. we're looking at the atlantic and the gulf mexico, extremely hot ocean temperatures on the surface.

what kind of impact does that have on marine life? what we are seeing in the oceans right now are astronomical and off the charts. so in some instances, it is causing an enormous amount of stress on species, including vegetation like sea grasses, mangroves and kelp forests, but of course on animals as well. and if we don't see some respite over the next coming weeks, then we are going to likely see mass mortalities, the way we saw in the north pacific heatwave a couple of years ago. dr stephanie roe, global climate and energy lead scientist for the world wildlife fund, thank you so much for your insights. thanks very much for having me. the problems with climate change are daunting, but there are some solutions. earlier i spoke to drjonathan foley,

ceo of project drawdown, a nonprofit organisation with a mission to "help the world stop climate "change as quickly, safely and equitably as possible." jonathan, i want to start with a tweet i read from you just earlier today, in fact. it was one of the more heartening tweets i have seen on late. you wrote: "yes, the climate crisis is terrifying. "but i'm actually excited by what i see "on the solutions front." tell us more about that? thank you for having me. we are living in an interesting time, the world is in a race now, there is a race between a world where things get much, much worse with climate change, and we just heard a lot about what the possibilities to that world might look like. but there is also another world where we get it right, where we stop climate change and we end up building a better world in the process. i am fighting for that world. and i am actually more optimistic that that is still a possibility that i have been a long time. look around the world— there are about 40 countries in the world,

including the us, including the uk, that i actually aggressively cutting their emissions. that is really good news. of course china, india, other countries still need to pivot, but we are beginning to see large fractions of the world cutting emissions dramatically. largely thanks to getting rid of coal, to the huge exhilaration of renewable energy which is getting cheaper faster than anyone ever thought possible, —— acceleration. we are seeing tipping points and things like electric vehicles and other areas, but also lesser—known climate solutions like the dramatic drop in deforestation in the amazon this year, next to brazil's change in government, all this attention we are beginning to focus on methane leaks around the world which are disproportionately important in the near—term to stopping climate change. we are not doing enough, but we are starting to build the toolbox we need to take concerted action, and that is a first,

we haven't even built the toolbox until recently, now at least we have some of the tools that we need to address the problem. the trick is to going and use them as quickly as we can. talking about using them, what are some of the key things do you think we need to do that we are not already doing? i think we need to employ what we call emergency brakes on climate change, things that work really fast. we need to focus on solutions that are here today like stopping deforestation, plugging methane leaks in our energy systems, addressing energy efficiency in food waste in our existing infrastructure, while we are building tomorrow's infrastructure of renewable energy, electric vehicles, better buildings and so on. what we cannot do is sit on our hands and worry and not act, or sit on our hands and wait for some maybe future technology to save us, that is still too far down the road. we need to act now with the tools we have today. on that point, talking about the delay them, the us is the world's number two emitter, much

of the technology you are talking about is already out there — what do you think is holding the us back? well, the us has come as i said before, cut its emissions by about 20% since 2007, a lot of people don't know that, and we are projected already to cut it by 30% by the end of this decade. now with the inflation reduction act and other big federal investments which are the first we have ever really seen, we are now looking at cutting emissions in this country by maybe 40—45% by the end of this decade. so i don't accept the premise that the us is not cutting emissions dramatically while accounting for trade with china and other countries and growing its economy and its ovulation. so the us is acting, it is actually doing afairamount. a lot of the technology the us creates is... crosstalk

that's a really important point, you are talking about equity and making this equitable. how much more progress is needed on that front? absolutely, the us has a giant carbon footprint of its past that is still in the atmosphere. we polluted more of the atmosphere than any other economy in the world, and so we owe the world a lion's share of the solutions and may be compensation for the damages that have occurred. that is a big debate happening now. but the us is also one of the biggest innovators in the space in terms of new technologies and materials that are going out into the world. this is fantastic. us innovation combined with europe and chinese manufacturing ability to scale is changing the world. it is no longer feasible to think about an economy that is only going to be powered by fossil fuels in the world, it's going to change. we have had that argument from critics that in order to do this we have to slow

economic growth to limit carbon emissions, what are your thoughts on that briefly if you don't mind? i don't think that's true at all. we're going to see an acceleration i think of a new economy, an economy that is actually creating equity and value, an exhilarating a transition to a renewable future and one that is better. drjonathan foley, from project drawdown, really great to have your insights here on bbc news, thank you for being with us. thank you. and finally, showers and icy treats are helping to keep animals cool at the phoenix zoo during the record—breaking heat we've been talking about. from cooling showers to frozen grapes, zookeepers have been thinking up a range of ways to keep animals from cooler climates from overheating. a good a reminder as any to reach for the ice cream and find a shady spot. i'm helena humphrey. thanks for your company. more news at the top of the hour. dojoin me thanif top of the hour. dojoin me than if you can.

hello. it's going to be a wet one for many of us this weekend. in fact, it'll feel more like september, perhaps even early october, with the strength of the wind — really not a pleasant picture at all. the weather systems are lining up in the atlantic. here's the satellite picture. multiple weather fronts heading in our direction and that cloud has already spread across the uk. it has been raining and the rain will get heavier in some areas as we go through the morning and into saturday afternoon. now, over the next two or three days, we will have rather a lot of rain in some parts of the country where you see the deeper blue colours here, the darker blues. that's the rainfall accumulating to around 50 millimetres of rain or more, so about a month's worth of rainfall in a couple of days. so the forecast for the morning shows that rain across many parts of the country. the north of scotland, however, will have had clear skies and in fact, really chilly in the sheltered glens, maybe 4—5 degrees in rural spots, but for most of us, it's in the range of around 12—14. so a lot of cloud in the morning.

the winds will also be strengthening in southwestern parts of the country to near gale force along some coasts. notice that the north of scotland escapes the rain. in fact, for our friends in lerwick, we're anticipating mostly sunny skies, and indeed northern parts of mainland scotland also enjoying some sunshine. all the weather action will be way to the south. outbreaks of rain turning heavier in northern ireland, parts of wales and also the northwest of england. all of this does not bode well for the ashes. interruptions are likely, and it also is not ideal for golf either. the forecast, then, for sunday. the low pressure is still with us. it's in a process of moving away into the north sea. but this long weather front here, well, it's trying to pull away, but it's doing so at a glacial pace, so that does mean more rain to come, especially across parts of northern england and wales. now, come monday and tuesday, that low is across scandinavia. the weather does tend to improve a little bit, but the air is generally coming in from the north atlantic, so that means that the temperatures will remain subdued in the week ahead. and, actually, the weather outlook is still looking fairly unsettled with all of these shower symbols here in the outlook. wherever you are,

have a good weekend.