“Twenty years from now, a summer like this is going to feel like a mild summer”

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July was the hottest month in modern times. Now, August is shaping up to be a month of extremes. In the United States alone, a tropical storm swept across the Southwest, another struck Texas, Maui burned, and a blistering heat dome sat atop the middle of the country. In India, torrential rains triggered deadly landslides, Morocco and Japan hit new heat records, and southern Europe braced for another scorching heat wave.

Those extremes have also brought high-stakes tests for public officials: Where public alerts and education worked, death and destruction were minimized. Where they didn’t, the results were catastrophic. Maui has so far recorded more than 100 deaths since the blaze that started Aug. 8, and that number is projected to rise.

Not all of the extreme weather events can be immediately attributed to climate change. But they reflect the hazards that much of the world needs to prepare for as El Niño, a natural weather pattern that can play out over several years, aggravates the weather extremes fueled by the burning of fossil fuels.

Compared with the start of the industrial age 150 years ago, the global average temperature is at least 1.2 degrees higher, and rising still, as the world continues to burn more fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming. Scientists have repeatedly warned of more heat, wildfires, droughts and intense rainfall with every degree of future warming. For local communities and their government officials, that means having to adapt to sometimes unpredictable hazards and making hard choices about where and how to rebuild after disaster strikes.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said that 103.7 million Americans live in areas that are under extreme weather alerts on Tuesday.

“Twenty years from now, a summer like this is going to feel like a mild summer,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Los Angeles, in an online briefing Monday afternoon. “In terms of incredibly frenetic pace of global extremes we are seeing this summer, in terms of temperatures and precipitation, that’s only going to get worse as the climate continues to warm.”