Warning of unprecedented heatwaves as El Niño set to return in 2023

The greenhouse gases emitted by human activities have driven up average global temperature by about 1.2C to date. This has already led to catastrophic impacts around the world, from searing heatwaves in the US and Europe to devastating floods in Pakistan and Nigeria, harming millions of people.

India's monsoons, and rains in southern Africa can also be suppressed. Other regions, such as east Africa and the southern US, both of which have suffered recent droughts, can get more rain and flooding. In South America, southern regions are wetter, but the Amazon, already approaching a dangerous tipping point, is drier.

Palmer and colleagues have called for the establishment of a $1bn international centre for climate modelling, akin to the Large Hadron Collider that allows international particle physicists to do together what no single nation can do alone.