In this case first place is the worst place to be, NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe.”

This is climate change,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. It is an exclamation mark on a summer of unprecedented heat, drought, wildfires and flooding.

This report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid and intensifying, unprecedented in thousands of years, said IPCC Vice Chair Ko Barrett, senior climate adviser for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The changes we experience will increase with further warming.

If we reduce emissions globally to net zero by 2040 there is still a two-thirds chance to reach 1.5 degrees and if we globally achieve net zero emissions by the middle of the century, there is still a one-third chance to achieve that, said Dr Friederike Otto, Associate Director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and one of the authors of the IPCC report.