Earth is on track for devastating climate change if we don't act. These 5 weather disasters show what's to come.

Planet Earth is on a trajectory to cross a dangerous climate warming threshold in the next decade unless speedy action is taken to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions, a new United Nations report states.

Such global warming will have environmental consequences that would affect billions of people all over the world. Here we look at some of the worst weather disasters that hit the planet over the past 12 months, providing a disconcerting glimpse of what may lie ahead.

The report, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. advisory body, on Monday (March 20) states that, without strengthening mitigation policies, the world may warm by more than 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) by the end of this century. Experts warn that any warming beyond the 1.5 degree C (2.7 degrees F) threshold, identified in the 2015 Paris Agreement, will have unpredictable effects. This threshold, the report states, may be breached as early as 10 years from now.

"Warming of 3 degrees [C] would have a dramatic impact on human health, the biosphere, food security and the global economy," Petteri Taalas, the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), commented on the IPCC report in a statement.  "Many of those risks could be avoided if we would stay within 1.5 degrees [C] warming."

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He added that the WMO will soon release its own global climate change report, which will show that "all of the climate parameters are moving in totally the wrong direction." Those parameters include "ocean warming, ocean acidification, melting of glaciers, sea level rise, flooding and drought events, and concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide" in Earth's atmosphere.

We may already have a glimpse of what these "wrongly heading parameters" mean in real life. In the past 12 months, many parts of the world experienced weather-related disasters that were in various ways extraordinary. The five events presented here, however, are just the tip of the iceberg.

1. Europe hit by worst drought in 500 years

The summer of 2022 was like no other across swaths of western and central Europe. The proverbially rainy England didn't see a drop of rain in weeks. For a few days in July, temperatures soared to unprecedented (for England) 105 degrees F (40 degrees C), smashing records across the country. In Germany and the Netherlands, water levels in the mighty Rhine River, Western Europe's most important waterway, dropped so low that ship traffic had to be restricted for weeks. The Danube and  Po rivers, in Eastern Europe and Italy, respectively, experienced similar conditions.

Over a period of several months, satellites watched from space as the usually green and lush continent turned a parched beige. Authorities in several European countries, such as Spain, the Netherlands, France and the U.K. instated water usage restrictions, including car washing and garden irrigation bans. According to the European Union's environmental program Copernicus, the drought of 2022 may be the worst the continent has experienced in 500 years.

2. Pakistan sees worst floods in history

While water levels in European rivers were hitting record lows, the mountainous Pakistan in southwestern Asia struggled with the exact opposite problem. From June to October 2022, vast areas of the country were submerged in flood waters. The floods, the worst in Pakistan's recorded history, struck as a result of intense monsoon rains, which, together with unusually high temperatures, exacerbated the melting of glaciers that cover the country's spectacular mountain ranges.

The floods killed over 1,700 people and displaced more than 2 million in relatively poor Pakistan and plunged the country into a humanitarian crisis. Six months after the floods officially subsided, contaminated and stagnant water still affects nearly 2 million of Pakistan's 230 million inhabitants, according to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP).

Pakistan, which according to the CDP produces less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, is a textbook example of the disproportionate impacts of climate change on poor and developing nations.

According to an IPCC statement released with the new report, "almost half of the world's population lives in regions highly vulnerable to climate change." Moreover, the number of casualties from climate change-related weather disasters in those regions increased by a factor of 15  over the past decade.

3. Hurricane Ian batters Florida and Fiona makes landfall in Canada

The Atlantic hurricane season of 2022 started late. For the first time in 25 years, not a single named tropical storm emerged above the Atlantic Ocean in the month of August. However, when the hurricane season finally arrived, it did so in a memorable way. Ultimately, it became one of the costliest hurricane seasons in history, largely due to the rampage of Hurricane Ian in late September.

The deadliest hurricane to hit Florida since 1935, Ian was remarkable for a multitude of reasons. Peaking as a Category 4 hurricane on the 5-grade Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, Ian packed an enormous amount of moisture. The torrential rains the hurricane unleashed left a trail of devastating floods in the storm's wake. This intense rainfall, some scientists believe, was a direct result of climate change and the warming of Atlantic waters observed in recent years.