Key Points
Temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are smashing one record after another, with extreme, deadly heat being reported in countries from the US and China to Japan, Italy and Spain.O)..
Japanese authorities, meanwhile, declared a "heat stroke alert" and urged millions of people to protect themselves from scorching temperatures..
The study, led by scientists at the UK's University of Exeter and Nanjing University in China, found that 60 million people are already exposed to dangerous heat levels, characterized by an average temperature of 29 C or higher..
Weather attribution scientists have found that sweltering heatwaves in the US in June were made five times more likely by climate change, while 2022's 40 C temperatures in the UK would have been practically impossible without planetary heating..
Limiting warming to the lower Paris Agreement target of 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels would still expose 400 million people to dangerous heat levels by the end of the century, the Nature Sustainability study found..
