A new World Bank re­port ex­plor­ing the im­pact of cli­mate change in the Caribbean and glob­al­ly,finds that 1.5�Cwarmingis al­ready locked in­to the Earth's at­mos­phere.

A world 1.5�C warmer will mean more se­vere droughts and glob­al sea lev­el rise, in­creas­ing the risk of dam­age from storm surges and crop loss and rais­ing the cost of adap­ta­tion for mil­lions of peo­ple.The poor and un­der­priv­i­leged, as well as the el­der­ly and chil­dren, are found to be hit the hard­est.

"With­out con­cert­ed ac­tion to re­duce emis­sions, the plan­et is on pace for 2�C warm­ing by mid-cen­tu­ry and 4�C or more by the time to­day's teenagers are in their eight­ies," a re­lease from the World Bank web­site says.

In the Caribbean, the re­port warns of longer droughts, ex­treme weath­er, and in­creas­ing ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion.

Ris­ing tem­per­a­tures al­so af­fect food se­cu­ri­ty. The oceans, which have ab­sorbed about 30 per cent of all hu­man-caused car­bon diox­ide so far, will con­tin­ue to acid­i­fy and warm, dam­ag­ing coral ecosys­tems where sea life thrives and send­ing fish mi­grat­ing to cool­er wa­ters. The re­sult for the Caribbean could be the loss of up to 50 per cent of its cur­rent catch vol­ume.

As tem­per­a­tures rise, heat ex­tremes on par with the heat waves in the Unit­ed States in 2012 and Rus­sia in 2010 will be­come more com­mon.Forests, in­clud­ing the Ama­zon, are al­so at risk. And melt­ing per­mafrost will re­lease methane, a pow­er­ful green­house gas that will dri­ve more warm­ing in a dan­ger­ous feed­back loop.

"To­day's re­port con­firms what sci­en­tists have been say­ing � past emis­sions have set an un­avoid­able course of warm­ing over the next two decades, which will af­fect the world's poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple the most," World Bank Group Pres­i­dent Jim Yong Kim said. "We can­not con­tin­ue down the cur­rent path of unchecked, grow­ing emis­sions."

The new re­port comes on the heels of strong new warn­ings from theIn­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change(IPCC) about the pace of cli­mate change.

"The good news is that there is a grow­ing con­sen­sus on what it will take to make changes to the un­sus­tain­able path we are cur­rent­ly on," Pres­i­dent Kim said.

"Our re­sponse to the chal­lenge of cli­mate change will de­fine the lega­cy of our gen­er­a­tion. The stakes have nev­er been high­er."

Study da­ta are avail­able in open for­mat here.