The world is facing a thousand years of deadly heatwaves regardless of whether humanity reaches net zero emissions - but delays in achieving that target will only make things worse.

Researchers working at the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, and CSIRO, modelled what the next millennia of heatwaves would look like, based on the assumption global net zero would be reached between 2030 and 2060.

Heatwaves were shown to be systematically hotter, longer and more frequent the longer net zero is delayed, and they may be exacerbated by long-term warming in the Southern Ocean even after net zero is reached.

Most trends showed no decline over the entire 1000 years of each simulation, indicating that heatwaves do not start to revert back towards pre-industrial conditions even wh

See Full Page