The world's heat waves are getting longer and more intense, according to a new study from UCLA. 

The study was published on Monday in the journal of Nature Geoscience and was led by researchers from UCLA and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile. 

It says that climate change is making heat waves hotter and longer, and that the lengthening of heat waves will speed up as things continue to get warmer. Longer heat waves will in turn bring further danger to people, animals, agriculture and the world's ecosystems. 

Scientists used an equation that incorporated variables into climate models that account for the way one day's temperature influences the next day, finding that there was acceleration on a global level. 

"Each fraction of a degree of warming will have more impact than the last," said UCLA climate scientist David Neelin. "The acceleration means that if the rate of warming stays the same, the rate of our adaptation has to happen quicker and quicker, especially for the most extreme heat waves, which are changing the fastest."

Neelin said that certain regions will feel hotter than normal temperatures on a more frequent basis.

"Whatever the threshold is in your region that's uncomfortable and unusual, that is going to be exceeded more often, so you're gonna get higher frequency of very hot days," he said while speaking with CBS News Los Angeles. "Air conditioning is extremely valuable in being able to adapt to these heatwaves, but that's not necessarily gonna work for the ecosystems around you and it's not gonna work for the fire risk."

The study's results come as much of the United States sits under some form of heat warnings issued by the National Weather Service. In June, a massive heat dome broke records across that nation.

Across the Atlantic Ocean in Europe, both the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Acropolis in Athens were closed and Wimbledon, the world-famous tennis tournament held in London, had to incorporate changes for athletes in the midst of the record hottest opening day. 

"We found that the longest and rarest heat waves in each region — those lasting for weeks — are the ones that show the greatest increases in frequency," said the study's lead author Cristian Martinez-Villalobos, an assistant professor of engineering at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. "By taking into account the natural variation of temperatures at each location, we find that recent observed trends of heat wave durations already follow a similar pattern of acceleration predicted by climate models."

Southern California's first triple-digit heat wave is expected to begin on Wednesday, bringing sweltering heat to inland regions and valleys. 

As such, CBS News Los Angeles meteorologists have issued a NEXT Weather Alert in order to make sure that people living in the areas most likely to be impacted can prepare accordingly.