Something truly horrific happened recently. (I know what you're thinking but, no, not that.)

After three months of record-shattering heat, we witnessed two things that we've never seen before since the last ice age receded more than 12,000 years ago, allowing humans to migrate out from warmer "Garden of Eden" pockets in places like the Persian Gulf region to every corner of the Earth.



The Changing Climate View All 15 Images



First, we saw our future: a world without winter. Between December and February, temperatures were nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average.

And, second, the planet's surface temperature (even if only for a brief period of time) crossed a bright, red line that scientists have warned us we must never, ever cross or very bad things will almost certainly start to happen: in February it was more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial revolution times for the first time in recorded history, and perhaps for the first time in human civilization.

What does all this mean? In practical terms, it means the Arctic region saw temperature spikes as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit above normal during its "winter" season. It means the northern hemisphere had no winter, so they had to truck snow in for the Iditarod race in Alaska. It means that the allergy season has already started in parts of the United States – in February.

But, in the bigger picture, it means (quite ominously) that world and business leaders who are mostly ignoring the problem and hoping that they can wait 10 or 20 years to "deal" with climate change may be very, very wrong. Things could go badly, quite quickly, when feedback loops start to cross wires and systemic changes in one part of the world start to dramatically affect other parts of the world.

Take the Arctic. It's almost unheard of to see temperatures there so far above normal in the winter. What happens in the Arctic doesn't just stay in the Arctic. It isn't only about polar bears, and whether they're now in real jeopardy (they are). It's more like leaving your refrigerator door open, turning off the air conditioning in your house, and then leaving for summer vacation. All the ice melts, floods your kitchen and short-circuits the wiring in the basement.

Or take the jet stream, which has been stable for hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years. With soaring temperatures in and around the Arctic, the jet stream that holds cold air in and causes changes in the weather in the northern hemisphere may now be both wobbly and unpredictable. An unstable jet stream may usher in mega-storms, or mega-droughts, or mega-God-only-knows-what.

Earth's climate system is intricate, complicated and interconnected. What happens in one part of the world now very much affects other parts of the world. We may now be seeing it start to play out (right now, not in some vague future world) in very different ways than predicted.

The equator is getting warmer creating a sort of super-highway for things like the Zika virus to spread further - carried by mosquitoes that find new homes and places to migrate.



A sustained, four-year drought in California's breadbasket (which is responsible for a big part of the world's food) may mean either a big jump in food prices – or no U.S. food exports at all.

Oceans that have held in huge storehouses of heat for years are now responding to a huge El Nino cycle, and could potentially have a serious impact on a previously stable monsoon season (which is almost solely responsible for fresh water for about a billion people). I can assure you: world leaders in Asia are simply not prepared for what an unpredictable monsoon season does to civil unrest. China, for instance, won't hesitate if it needs to go elsewhere for fresh water to sustain its population. If it needs to rework dams and rivers so it receives fresh waters that typically go elsewhere, so be it. If this means war with neighbors, oh well.

Let's be clear. February annihilated the monthly temperature record globally for this time of year. I don't mean by just a little bit – I mean by a magnitude greater than anything we've ever seen. It was the final capstone on a winter that truly wasn't for the world.

Temperature records are usually measured in hundredths of a degree, but February was a record by an astounding .85 degrees Fahrenheit, NASA confirmed. What's more, the five largest monthly global warm anomalies in NASA's records have occurred within the last five months, according to the Weather Channel.

Yes, it's an anomaly. Yes, it's monthly, and not yearly. Yes, 2016 will likely be just incrementally hotter than 2015, which was the hottest year in human history – and which broke the previous record, in 2014. Yes, it will take years before we actually and permanently cross the 2C red line on an annual basis.

The future may be hurtling at us faster than science thought. December was a monthly heat record. January was a monthly heat record. Now, February has shattered the previous monthly heat record. All three add up to something that we need to acknowledge. Something is happening, and we need to pay attention.

This particular El Nino cycle is releasing huge stores of heat, and unleashing things that were previously unheard of in some parts of the world. It was responsible for tropical cyclones in places that had never experienced them before, where the population wasn't prepared. Hurricane Winston, for example, a Category 5 storm hit Fiji and wiped out a significant portion of the island nation's infrastructure. Entire villages were destroyed, along with roughly 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). If there was a Category 6 (there isn't), then Winston might have been one.

Hardly anyone in the media outside Australia reported on it, or paid attention to the gigantic storm's aftermath. Furthermore Fiji is no Florida or Louisiana, two areas that at least have some history with major storms and can prepare. To put it simply, since you are forgiven for not knowing about it with all the media attention on a presidential race spinning rapidly out of control, the storm was devastating to a small region of the world that depends on tourism for its tranquil waters and pristine beaches.

Hurricane Winston though was not an isolated incident. New studies just emerged with similarly awful import:

Sea level rise in the 20th century was faster than science predicted, which means that coastal cities (especially on the eastern seaboard of the United States) have much less time to prepare.

Half of the world species (you know, the animals that we, the humans, are supposed to be looking out for) are now migrating either north or south in a sometimes desperate, last-ditch effort to adapt to a changing climate.

New, non-environmental studies are showing a flood of refugees and migrants from parts of Africa that are partially driven by new climate and drought conditions in and around the Sahel. We now have more migrants fleeing to other parts of the world than at any point in history, including during World War II. Some of it is war. But some of it is climate.

So here's the bottom line. The "winter that wasn't" is as clear a sign as we're likely to see. The wolf is at the door. It isn't something our grandchildren will deal with. It's for us to confront, right now.