Hello and welcome to Newsar from the BBC World Service.

Come in you live from our studios in central London.

I'm Julian Marshall.

The UN's annual climate summit gets underway in Azerbaijan on Monday with 2024 on track to be the warmest on record.

More than 100 heads of state and government,

a gathering in Baku for what's known as COP29.

They'd previously pledged to stop the planet from heating by 1.5 Celsius by the end of the century,

but it's looking likely to be roughly double that.

And if the numbers don't convince

the sceptics, maybe the climate will, with an increasing number of extreme weather events

caused by man-made global warming. Europe, Asia and Africa have been affected by killer storms,

heat waves and floods, some examples. More than 220 people were killed last month

in the Spanish region of Valencia, in one of the worst floods in Europe this century. The BBC's

Nicky Schiller described the scenes. In front of me are dozens and dozens, probably hundreds of

cars, all tossed in the air and in the middle of the street.

There is debris everywhere.

There are blocks of concrete that have been thrown around.

There are bits of trees and the mud.

It is thick.

It is dirty and it is smelly.

And it is inundated the people's houses in this street.

Well, that was Spain and firefighters in Southern California this month.

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