It depends on who you are and where you live. Humans thrive in Kuwait City, where average highs top 43°C for several months a year. But extended runs of hot days and warm nights do lead to spikes in mortality, and climatologists expect an increasing number of heat waves in years to come.

Hot enough to boil oceans and vaporize rock. The highest terrestrial temperatures occurred more than four billion years ago, when a Mars-size proto-planet smashed into the Earth. (The debris from this collision formed our moon.) Within a millennium, the surface air temperature had dropped from a high of about 2,038°C down to 1,649°C. Then the planet went into a period of slower cooling that lasted a few tens of millions of years. As the atmosphere thickened with heat-trapping water clouds and carbon dioxide and a shell of solid rock formed around the Earth's core, conditions stabilized at 227°C.

Climate change is already happening, and it's time to get ready. Here's how we could adjust our most basic needs - food, water, shelter - to survive.

New Australian research as shown that Arctic temperatures are heating at a rate up to four times higher than the global average, and this extraordinary number is largely down to loss of sea ice and increased atmospheric circulation caused by global warming.

A new body of research conducted by Australian scientists has found that some species of fish may be able to adapt somewhat to increases in water temperature caused by rising CO2 levels.

The infamous El Merro municipal dump in north-western Colombia that once played home to 50,000 people has been a remediation nightmare for the country. However, the key to turning the 50 metre high dumping ground into something a little more palatable could be the very same bacteria that already live in its slightly-stinky depths.