The extreme weather conditions across the world are a result of global warming and all countries must understand that “now we have a battle on our hands to preserve the future of humanity,” the head of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, Sir David Anthony King, told N1, adding that this is “the biggest challenge our civilisation has ever had to face up to.”

The recent floods across Europe and the extreme heat recorded across the world are all connected, Sir King said.

“These extreme weather events have not just happened accidentally, they are driven by what has happened in the Arctic Circle region,” he said, explaining that the ice covering the Arctic Sea has been disappearing much more rapidly than was predicted.

“At this moment, the summer in the arctic region – when sunlight is there for 24 hours a day – the North Pole is not the coldest part of the northern hemisphere, it’s one of the warmest parts,” he said, adding that this resulted in the jet stream – the wind that blows across the Arctic Circle – being pushed north and becoming distorted.

The reason all of this is happening is global warming, he said.

“We should be worried, and we have every good reason to be worried,” he said, explaining that the arctic circle region has now changed the weather systems in the northern hemisphere and that nobody can predict how these changes will develop.

He reminded of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21).

“We agreed that we would not allow the temperature globally to exceed 1.5 degrees centigrade average above the pre-industrial level. Today we’re at 1.25 degrees centigrade and we have no sign of greenhouse gas levels decreasing,” he said.

“We need a global effort – and I don’t like to use the term ‘war effort’, but that is the nearest analogy – where all countries understand that now we have a battle on our hands to preserve the future of humanity. This is the biggest challenge our civilisation has ever had to face up to,” he said.

More about the reasons behind the extreme weather conditions across the world, as well as what could happen in the future and what must be done to avoid the worst-case scenario, can be heard in the full interview linked above.