APRIL was the hottest month ever, at 1.58ºC higher than the pre-industrial average, according to a report released on Wednesday by the European Union's climate monitoring institute, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
And it has been so for the last 11 months, with every preceding month being the hottest ever. No wonder we have been sweating under the sweltering heat in Malaysia. So have our neighbours to the north.
Myanmar broke its mercury record on April 28, with Chauk recording a new maximum of 48.2ºC, and Thailand registered its highest temperature a day earlier at 44.1ºC.
Elsewhere, like in the Sahel, the heat was cruellest, with thousands losing their lives. April was also a story of extreme rain in the Middle East, with the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Morocco experiencing unprecedented floods. Europe, Latin America and the United States weren't spared either.
The message is clear: human actions have pushed the global climate system to its limit. While acknowledging the contribution of natural events such as the El Nino phenomenon to temperature increases, the C3S report puts the blame principally on emissions from fossil fuels.
For years after the world's nations agreed in Paris in 2015 to limit temperature rises to between 1.5ºC and 2.0ºC above the pre-industrial average, climate scientists were confident that the lower limit was possible.
The findings of C3S's Wednesday report erode the confidence. Now, 80 per cent of the hundreds of climate scientists surveyed by The Guardian say the world is headed for at least a 2.5ºC Earth.
Of these, almost half of them anticipate a 3ºC world. Frighteningly, all of them are from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Only six per cent of the experts think the 1.5ºC limit would be met.
Relying on the six per cent and doing nothing more is to depend on false hope.
Why the alarm? Here is why. It is about sustaining the Earth as a liveable planet. And that means keeping the Earth no more warmer than 1.5ºC above the pre-industrial level. Is this still possible with occasional breaches of the 1.5ºC being reported every now and then?
Here is the good news. Annual, or even monthly breaches, do not mean that the Paris pact target is impossible. That target, IPCC tells us, is based on temperature increases over decades, not on any one year or month.
But that hope must not lead to a licence to make a 3ºC Earth because such a planet will not be safe for any form of life. We needn't wait until the Earth heats up to 3ºC to know if such a place is safe. Even a 1.58ºC the planet is already not. From Asia through the Middle East to Europe, roads-turned-rivers float cars like capsized boats.
Houses collapse like dominoes as floodwaters tear the ground under them. Elsewhere, frightful fires burn places out of existence. If occasional before, they have become a regularity.
But despite this somewhat dystopian picture — envisaged by climate experts and experienced by people across continents — the fight against climate change must continue to be waged.
If before the climate war was about cutting emissions, now it must also be about adapting to a hot Earth.