August was the planet’s hottest month ever recorded, capping a remarkably grim summer time of warmth data. With El Niño strengthening—and local weather change persevering with to warmth issues up—extra data are doubtless in retailer effectively into subsequent yr.
Knowledge from Copernicus, the European Union’s local weather company, reveals that final month tied with July 2023 for Earth’s hottest month. (July can also be normally the most popular month of the yr.) This July additionally tied with July 2024 for the second-hottest July on report, whereas June 2026 was the second-hottest June ever recorded. The information comes on the heels of a separate announcement on Wednesday from the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which declared this was the most popular summer time for the US, beating a earlier report set in the course of the Mud Bowl.
The sweltering summer time is a grim signal of how burning fossil fuels is pushing temperatures up across the globe whereas unleashing extra intense and longer warmth waves.
“August 2026 was a exceptional month within the international local weather report,” Samantha Burgess, the strategic lead for local weather on the European Middle for Medium-Vary Climate Forecasts, stated in an announcement. “Mixed with report international sea floor temperatures and the warmest summer time on report for Western Europe, these observations present how local weather change is driving extremes throughout each the environment and the oceans. The impacts of those situations are more and more being felt by communities, economies, and ecosystems internationally.”
The worldwide common temperature for August was 1.65 levels Celsius (3 levels Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial common, in keeping with Copernicus. Whereas it was scorching globally this summer time, the impacts performed out with harmful and typically lethal outcomes domestically.
{Photograph}: Ufuk Celal Guzel/Getty Photographs
Researchers estimate that as many as 35,000 folks died throughout warmth waves in Germany, France, and Spain this summer time. File-breaking fires additionally raged throughout components of Europe, unleashing the first documented fireplace cloud in France and threatening a key NASA observatory in Spain. In North America, wildfires in Canada and northern components of the US crammed areas throughout the Northeast with smoke.
Local weather change has boosted background temperatures, however the El Niño roiling the jap Pacific Ocean has piled on extra warmth. El Niños normally coincide with a brief uptick in international temperature from 0.1 to 0.2 levels Celsius. This yr’s El Niño is forecast to succeed in report energy and upend climate across the globe. However the full affect on the planet’s temperature received’t be felt till subsequent yr, that means that subsequent summer time could also be even hotter than the one we simply lived via.
Local weather scientists have warned that the world wants to forestall long-term common warming from breaching 1.5 levels Celsius to keep away from the worst impacts of local weather change. Whereas temperatures above the brink for a single month don’t symbolize a everlasting breach of this temperature, they’re an indication that the world is getting nearer to this benchmark.
Earlier this month, the UN warned in a report that the world is more likely to cross the 1.5 levels Celsius threshold in a number of years. To sluggish and finally reverse the rise in international temperatures, the world must cease burning fossil fuels and decrease carbon emissions.
“This summer time’s scorching warmth, raging wildfires, and lethal floods are a warning of what lies forward,” UN Secretary-Common Antőnio Guterres stated in an announcement. “We should make the overshoot above 1.5 levels as small and quick as attainable. That calls for an overshoot of ambition.”
