Hello and welcome to Newsar from the BBC World Service coming to you live from our studios in central London.

I'm Julian Marshall.

Bring down the temperature, said President Biden to Americans in the febrile political atmosphere that followed Donald Trump's election victory.

But his advice could equally apply to the more than 100 heads of state and government

gathering in Azerbaijan for the UN's annual climate summit known as COP29,

especially since 2024, is predicted to be the warmest year on record.

World leaders had previously pledged to stop the planet from heating by 1.5 Celsius

from pre-industrial levels 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 itself will,

with an increasing number of extreme weather events caused by human-made global warming. Europe, Asia,

Africa, and the Americas have been affected by killer storms, heat waves and floods. More than 220 people

were killed last month in the Spanish region of Valencia

in one of the worst floods in Europe this century. At the BBC's Nikki 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.

...