The prolonged record heat wave that has pushed temperatures across much of the country close to 40 degrees Celsius could worsen next year and persist as the new normal for upcoming summers, an expert said. "Next summer could be even hotter, and we need to be prepared for it," Kim Baek-min, a professor of environmental atmospheric sciences at Pukyong National University, said while appearing on CBS news radio program "Park Sung-tae's News Show." He attributed the record heat that has swept across the world to a super El Niño — an unusually intense occurrence of El Niño, a phenomenon in which sea surface temperatures rise above normal levels. “It is the most unusual meteorological event this year,” Kim said. “Considering that global temperatures tend to rise in steps after an El Niño, temperatures are likely to increase even more steeply next year.” On a broader level, the biggest contributor to the heat wave is persistently warm ocean water, according to Kim. He explained that oceans, which have helped buffer the global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions since industr