You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 13 hours GMT on Wednesday,

the 17th of May. UN experts warn the world is likely to breach a key temperature limit in the

next four years. Floods in northern Italy have killed at least eight people and led to the

cancellation of the Formula One Grand Prix. And why the former president of France, Nicolas Succo Z,

is facing House arrest and an electronic tag. Also in the podcast, no sense of humour.

The joke which prompted the Chinese authorities to impose a two million dollar fine.

As the world heats up, climate scientists have been clinging to the hope that

governments will be able to do enough to limit the global rise in temperatures

to one and a half degrees above what it used to be before fossil fuel emissions took off.

But researchers now say there is a 66% chance we will breach that threshold between now and 2027.

Leon Hermenson is from the UK Met Office. Nobody's going to be untouched by these changes that

are happening that have happened. It's leading already to floods across the world to droughts

and big movements of people. And I think that's what we need to work better to understand

in terms of what this report implies for those things. Our environment correspondent Matt McGraw

explained the main findings. I suppose the headline figure here is that we are in a period of

increased warming and that increased warming is happening because of human activities and

burning fossil fuels, but also because of this likely onset of this El Nino weather event,

which will push more heat up from the oceans into the atmosphere. 2016 is the record

warmest year on record at the moment and that happened after an El Nino event as well.

So the scientists are predicting that over this year and the next four years after it,

we could see record temperatures. In fact, there are 98% certain we will see a record temperature,

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