TV forecasters imagine a future of near-daily weather disasters

Imaginary television weather forecasts predicted floods, storms and searing heat from Arizona to Zambia within four decades, as part of a United Nations campaign on Monday to draw attention to a U.N. summit this month on fighting global warming. “Miami South Beach is under water,” one forecaster says in a first edition of “weather reports from the future,” a series set in 2050. The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization said the scenarios were “imaginary but realistic” for a warming world.

Climate change is affecting the weather everywhere. It makes it more extreme and disturbs established patterns. That means more disasters; more uncertainty.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked world leaders to make “bold pledges” to fight climate change at the meeting in New York. The summit is meant as a step toward a deal by almost 200 nations, due by the end of 2015, to slow global warming. A U.N. report last year concluded that it is at least 95 percent probable that human activities, rather than natural variations in the climate, are the main cause of global warming since 1950.

Science climate change