Newscast is the unscripted chats behind the headlines.

It's informed, but informal.

We pick the day's top stories and we find experts who can really dig into them. We use our colleagues in the newsroom and

our contacts. Some people pick up the phone rather faster than others.

We sometimes literally run around the BBC building to grab the very best guests.

Join us for daily news chats to get you ready for today's conversations.

Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds.

The year 2020 has challenged the world with two major crises.

One has been unmissible. The coronavirus pandemic which has seen governments across the planet

responding with varying degrees of success. across the a longer term challenge, global warming, because 2020 is on course to break previous

records and has seen a series of weather records tumble, showing why we should care. Climate scientist Michael Mann is blunt.

You know, 20 is another year where we saw record heat, unprecedented heat waves, wildfires, in the northern hemisphere, in the southern hemisphere.

And I experienced it.

In early 2020, I was on sabbatical down in Australia in Sydney, Australia.

As Australia was experiencing the highest temperature

it's ever reached, and that was also accompanied

by extreme drought and bushfires that blanketed the continent, unlike anything they had ever seen.

So 2020 sort of started off with a bang, with that unprecedented summer heat down in the southern hemisphere,

and it continued on as we got into the northern hemisphere summer,

we once again saw record heat.

We saw the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded on this planet

in Death Valley, California.

...