Giving Compass' Take:

• While climate change will, over time, produce both extreme heat and extreme cold, scientists predict that for the next 5 years the earth will experience anomalous warmth. 

• How can funders help communities prepare for future heat waves?  

• Learn how to build climate resilience in the South. 

Forget about cooling down — according to a new scientific forecast, the years-long warm streak we’ve been enduring is likely to continue until at least 2022.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the forecast predicts the next five years to be “anomalously warm,” with an increased likelihood of extreme surface and ocean temperatures.

Using data from 10 existing climate change models, the scientists behind the study said the anticipated warming is beyond what would be expected from man-made global warming alone. Instead, the change would come from what’s known as the climate’s “internal variability,” which is influenced by natural factors such as the oscillation of the Earth’s oceans.

These internal factors have been pinpointed as the cause of the so-called global warming “hiatus” in the 2000s — when surface temperatures did not rise significantly even though the underlying climate warming trend continued.

“What we found is that for the next five years or so, there is a high likelihood of an anomalously warm climate compared to anomalously cold,” as was witnessed during the “hiatus,” study co-author and oceanographer Florian Sevellec told The Washington Post.

Read the full article about anomalous warmth by Dominique Mosbergen at Huffington Post.