This story is the first article of a two-part Mongabay mini-series exploring possible climate futures. Part Two will be published soon. The last two years brought record-shattering temperatures globally and a whirlwind of destructive weather, from catastrophic flooding in Europe and drought in Southern Africa to devastating wildfires in California. 2024 saw more than 600 major extreme weather events planetwide — 152 of which were unprecedented — resulting in the displacement of 824,500 people, according to the World Meteorological Association. Based on mounting evidence, some scientists now fear we’ve entered a new era of the climate emergency, characterized by accelerated warming and amplified disasters. Concurrently, recent destabilizing geopolitical events appear to be steering humanity away from decarbonization, delaying progress on urgently needed climate action. What does this mean for coming decades: Are we on course to avoid the most disastrous futures that climate models have warned of? And if not, how bad could things get? Mongabay asked some of the world’s leading scientists to weigh in. Drought in Bangladesh. Image by Md Harun Or Rashid / IAPB/VISION 2020 via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). A new phase of climate change? The unprecedented warming starting in 2023, then intensifying through 2024, surprised and alarmed many climate scientists. While the underlying warming trend was due to greenhouse gas emissions, several other factors likely contributed to the record temperature surge. This includes a strong El Niño event in 2023-24, an increase in solar radiation as the 11-year solar cycle peaked and a reduction in…This article was originally published on Mongabay