August 2026 tied with July 2023 as the hottest month ever recorded globally, with average temperatures reaching 1.65°C above preindustrial levels, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. The findings, released Thursday, underscore the combined impact of human-driven global warming and an intensifying El Niño system that scientists describe as the most severe on record.
«August 2026 is remarkable not simply because it's yet another temperature record that's been broken but because multiple parts of the climate system have reached unprecedented levels at the same time,» said Samantha Burgess of Copernicus. She noted that humans have not experienced temperatures warmer than this summer in the past 100,000 years.
Sea surface temperatures also hit record highs. The extra-polar ocean — regions just outside the Arctic and Antarctic circles — peaked at 21.1°C, the warmest ever observed. The tropical Pacific saw unprecedented warmth as winds slackened and warm waters surged eastward, fueling the strong El Niño. Burgess predicted that records will continue to fall as the El Niño intensifies through December, with some months potentially reaching 2°C above average.
The record August capped western Europe's hottest summer on record, a season that brought extreme weather and climate catastrophes across the Northern Hemisphere. Four major heatwaves and severe drought fueled massive wildfires near cities including Bordeaux in France and Madrid in Spain. The heat also lowered water levels in major rivers, revealing long-lost woolly mammoth bones and Nazi-era boats.
The human toll has been severe. At least 35,000 more people died in Europe during the heatwaves than would be statistically expected, and harvests of crops such as wheat are projected to be lower than usual. In Asia, the heat was linked to a glacier collapse that destroyed several towns in Nepal and Tibet, with at least 1,300 people confirmed dead and more than 5,500 still missing.
«For every degree of warming, the extreme events intensify, so in summer we get more frequent, more intense, more longer-lasting heatwaves,» Burgess said. «This obviously has a direct impact on our food security.»
In response to the record, the UK-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit called on leaders attending November's COP31 climate summit to reverse the rise in greenhouse gas emissions and invest more in adapting to current impacts. «The task now is to match the scale of the science with the scale of action, accelerating the transition away from coal, oil and gas to bring our climate back into balance,» said Gareth Redmond-King, the group's international lead.
The United Nations Environment Programme said this month that the world will overshoot the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C and should now focus on reversing warming later, including through carbon dioxide removal. «The sooner we can bring temperatures back down, the less time we overshoot, the better it will be for our climate system,» Burgess said.
Claire Barnes of Imperial College London warned that the records are not a stable new baseline. «Until we stop burning fossil fuels these records will continue to tumble, and the extremes will worsen faster than we are able to adapt,» she said.
