Polar regions, for instance, can experience anomalies of as much as 20 degrees whereas places close to the equator rarely have departures from the norm of more than a few degrees.

The paper applied a simple signal-to-noise ratio to identify the potential impacts of further warming and found aiming for 1.5 degrees rather than 2 degrees "makes quite a big difference", said Dr King.

"I was surprised by just how clear that outcome was.”

More temperate countries, led by Britain, were much less affected than tropical ones such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo - even though the latter nations have been relatively small contributors historically to greenhouse gas emissions, the paper found.

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"The tropics tend to be the poorest regions in the world and that means they don’t have the capacity to adapt, even though they’re going to feel the brunt of the climate change," said Dr King, who is also a researcher with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. “It certainly pushes the limits ... and some people won’t be able to cope.”

While the paper looked solely at temperatures, a warming world is also leading to rising sea levels, more powerful storms and heavier precipitation. The atmosphere can hold about 7 per cent more moisture for each degree of warming.

These changes would likely be "compounding effects", with poorer nations again likely to be harder hit than richer ones.

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“It’s seems distinctly unfair given the cumulative emissions of countries like the UK,” Dr King said.

“These are the countries that haven’t benefited from industrialisation and may have their economic development hampered in the future by bigger shifts in the climate than the wealthier countries will experience.”

Erwin Jackson, senior climate and energy adviser for Environment Victoria, said "current levels of warming are already at dangerous levels".

“While the world’s poorest will be hardest hit by climate change this is not just an issue for our northern neighbours," Mr Jackson said.

"Even current levels of warming are impacting on Australia through severe damage to the Great Barrier Reef, more extreme heatwaves and other weather-related events like bushfires."

While the discrepancy of impacts for poorer nations raised issues of climate injustice, Australia itself could face cascading challenges from abroad.

"What happens to others in our region matters to us," Mr Jackson said. "Severe economic damage and social unrest would have knock-on effects to our economy and national security.”