Abstract:
Data released by the EU climate monitoring agency Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) show that August 2026 became one of the hottest months in the world since meteorological records began, with the global average surface temperature reaching 16.96 degrees Celsius, basically the same as the previous highest record set in July 2023. This abnormally high temperature is driven by man-made climate warming and the strengthening El Niño phenomenon, which continues to accumulate large amounts of heat in the atmosphere and oceans.
Data show that the global average surface temperature in August 2026 is 0.85 degrees Celsius higher than the average level from 1991 to 2020, and 1.65 degrees Celsius higher than the average level in the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900. This is also the second time since November 2025 that the global monthly average temperature has exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius level focused on by the Paris Agreement.
However, scientists emphasize that exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius in a single month does not mean that global warming has permanently exceeded this goal. The 1.5°C target is usually based on global average temperatures over a longer time scale, rather than on data from a single month. But reaching this level again in August still shows that global temperatures are moving in a more dangerous direction.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service said the temperature difference between August 2026 and July 2023 is so small that they are considered jointly the hottest months in the world. At the same time, the global average temperature from June to August 2026 also tied with 2024 as one of the hottest northern hemisphere summers on record.
Samantha Burgess, head of climate strategy at the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said August 2026 was a "very unusual month" in the global climate record. She pointed out that this was not only the hottest August globally, but also one of the hottest months on record, and global temperatures returned to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, coupled with record ocean temperatures and the hottest summer on record in Western Europe, indicating that climate change is simultaneously driving extreme events in the atmosphere and oceans, and its impacts have increasingly affected communities, economies and ecosystems around the world.
The ocean also experienced unusually high temperatures. In August 2026, the average sea surface temperature of the non-polar oceans between 60 degrees north and south latitude reached 21.07 degrees Celsius, setting the highest August level on record and being the same as the all-time highest monthly average in March 2024. During August, the single-day average sea surface temperature of the global non-polar oceans even reached 21.11 degrees Celsius, setting another record high.
The heat anomaly is particularly concentrated in the tropical Pacific. The emerging El Niño phenomenon continues to strengthen, keeping seawater temperatures in the region at extremely high levels. Climate scientists predict that this El Niño event may continue to strengthen in the coming months and may even become one of the strongest El Niño events on record. Because El Niño can change global atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns, its impact may further extend to the Asian monsoons, tropical storms, and extreme weather in many regions.
Meanwhile, Western Europe has just experienced its hottest summer on record. Between June and August 2026, the average temperature in Western Europe exceeded the previous record set in 2003. Average summer temperatures across the continent are the third highest on record, behind only 2024 and 2022.
The UK also experienced its hottest summer since modern meteorological records began in 1884. An analysis by the Met Office shows that human-caused climate change makes such extremely hot summers around 130 times more likely in the UK.
Exceptionally high temperatures are not isolated events, but occur simultaneously with droughts, wildfires and falling river levels. The whole of Western Europe and most of Central and Eastern Europe remained significantly dry in August, with drought in some areas even lasting from May to the end of summer. Countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Romania and Serbia are experiencing severe drought.
Persistent high temperatures and insufficient rainfall have also caused abnormal drops in water volumes in many major European rivers. Important rivers such as the Rhine, Danube, South Bug and Dnieper have all experienced abnormally low flows, and river levels in some areas have affected shipping and other economic activities. Rivers such as the Seine, Rhone, and Loire also experienced unusually low flows throughout the summer.
Drought further increases wildfire risk. High temperatures caused vegetation and soil to lose moisture rapidly, and large-scale wildfires occurred in many parts of Europe during the summer. At the same time, hot weather has also caused significant pressure on social infrastructure such as agriculture, transportation, medical systems and schools. Extreme weather researcher Claire Barnes said this high temperature has had a very real human cost, with heatwaves, droughts and fires increasingly having an impact on people's lives.
Barnes also refuted the statement that "this kind of extreme weather has become the new normal." She pointed out that as long as humans continue to burn fossil fuels, global temperature records will continue to be refreshed, and extreme weather will worsen faster than society's ability to adapt. She believes that the extent to which climate change will worsen in the future is not completely uncontrollable, and humans can still influence this trend by reducing the use of fossil fuels.
In addition to Europe, obvious anomalies also occurred in many regions around the world in August 2026. Parts of the southern United States and northern Mexico, Canada, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Siberia, Central Asia, China, South America, South Africa, and northern Australia experienced dry conditions; while the eastern United States, Canada, Alaska, parts of Russia, northern India, eastern China, Taiwan, Japan, Chile, and southeastern Brazil experienced relatively humid weather.
Sea ice conditions are also affected by global warming. At the end of August, the Arctic sea ice area ranked 12th from the bottom in the historical record for that month. Especially in the waters north of Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya in the Russian Arctic, sea ice coverage was significantly less. As Arctic sea ice approached its lowest point of the year in September, the sea ice extent at the end of August was already the 13th lowest in history for the same period. Antarctic sea ice extent ranked fourth from the bottom in history in August.
Scientists pointed out that the extreme high temperature in August 2026 cannot be simply attributed to a certain natural climate phenomenon. The long-term trend remains largely driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, with El Niño further driving up global temperatures on top of this long-term warming backdrop. In other words, El Niño may explain why temperatures suddenly hit new highs this year, but it doesn't explain the underlying reasons why global temperatures have continued to rise over the past few decades.
As global temperatures, ocean temperatures, and extreme weather records in many regions continue to set new records, scientists are worried that similar high temperature events may become more frequent and severe in the future. Data in August 2026 once again show that global climate change is no longer just a change in temperature statistics, but is having an increasingly direct impact on human society and natural ecosystems through heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, ocean warming, and changes in the cryosphere.
Comments