New reports paint picture of an unlivable future with warming now expected to blow past key limit

A diver checks the coral reefs of the Society Islands in French Polynesia on May 9, 2019. The world's coral reefs are currently experiencing the worst mass bleaching event on record. Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Megacities flooded by surging seas . Mountains bare of the glaciers that once perched on their craggy peaks. Ice sheets crumbling into the ocean . The seafloor carpeted in ghostly skeletons of dead coral reefs .

This isn’t the plot of a disaster movie; it is a realistic picture of the world we are heading toward as global warming ticks upward and the global appetite to tackle the climate crisis wanes, scientists are warning.

A series of reports over the past month have sketched a plausible portrait of our future, and the picture is grim.

Three decades of global climate