— Check on relatives, friends and neighbors.

“It’s not something anyone wants to see, but that’s what the science is telling us,” Hermanson said. Two degrees of warming is the secondary threshold, the one considered less likely to break, set by the 2015 Paris agreement.Technically, even though 2024 was 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, the Paris climate agreement’s threshold is for a 20-year time period, so it has not been exceeded. Factoring in the past 10 years and forecasting the next 10 years, the world is now probably about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter since the mid 1800s, World Meteorological Organization climate services director Chris Hewitt estimated.

“With the next five years forecast to be more than 1.5C warmer than preindustrial levels on average, this will put more people than ever at risk of severe heat waves,and severe health impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat. Also we can expectas the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape,” said Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter.

Firefighters watch a helicopter drop water on the Palisades Fire in Mandeville Canyon in Los Angeles, Jan. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)Firefighters watch a helicopter drop water on the Palisades Fire in Mandeville Canyon in Los Angeles, Jan. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Ice in the Arctic — which will continue to warm 3.5 times faster than the rest of the world — will melt and seas will rise faster, Hewitt said.

What tends to happen is that global temperatures rise like riding on an escalator, with temporary and natural El Nino weather cycles acting like jumps up or down on that escalator, scientists said. But lately, after each jump from anAmerican Eagle Outfitters sank 6.4% after becoming the latest company to pull its financial forecasts. Treasury yields rose in the bond market.

The S&P 500 rose 6.03 points, or 0.1%, to 5,892.58.The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 89.37 points, or 0.2%, to 42,051.06.

The Nasdaq composite rose 136.72 points, or 0.7%, to 19,146.81.The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 18.54 points, or 0.9%, to 2,083.80.