As of today, much of the world is not prepared for the record-breakers already happening around the globe, said Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and with the Climate Impact Lab. But summers like this one — filled with apocalyptic climate disasters — have the potential to become a kind of “focusing event,” he said. “It’s getting people’s attention on the fact that we have this climate adaptation deficit,” Kopp said. “If we made changes to be more resilient to the things we have already experienced this summer, that would do us a good job for more events in the future.”