Global average surface temperatures in August 2026 came in 1.65 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, matching the record set in July 2023 for the warmest month ever measured. Two separate national climate agencies, using two different baselines and two different datasets, reached the same conclusion within a day of each other.
Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, called the month “a remarkable month in the global climate record,” pointing to the combination of record ocean heat and Western Europe’s hottest summer on record as evidence that the atmosphere and oceans are moving in tandem.
Two agencies, two baselines, the same record
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service measured the global-average surface air temperature at 16.96 degrees Celsius, 0.85 degrees above the 1991-2020 average and 1.65 degrees above the estimated 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline, marking the first month to cross 1.5 degrees since November 2025. Copernicus also recorded the joint-highest average sea surface temperature ever measured over the extra-polar oceans, tied with March 2024.
The United States’ own tally landed at a different number because it starts from a different reference period. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information put the global surface temperature 2.38 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.32 degrees Celsius, above the twentieth-century average, the warmest August in the agency’s 1850-2026 record. It was the 48th consecutive August with temperatures above that baseline, and all ten of the warmest Augusts on record have now occurred since 2016.
The World Meteorological Organization folded both findings, along with NASA’s, into a single confirmation that August was the hottest on record, adding that a strengthening El Niño event was fueling record sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific and would keep influencing global weather patterns well into 2027. The agency said it would present an updated reading on the year’s climate at the COP31 summit in Antalya, Turkey, in November.
A U.S. summer that finally beat the Dust Bowl
Inside the United States, the record wasn’t just global math. NOAA’s national climate summary put the contiguous U.S. summer average at 74.4 degrees Fahrenheit, the warmest in the 132-year record, edging out the previous marks set in 1936 and 2021 by four tenths of a degree. August itself averaged 75.6 degrees across the Lower 48, also a record, with daytime highs averaging 88.6 degrees, the warmest on record for that measure as well.
California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado each recorded their warmest August on record, and Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado each posted their warmest summer. The same NOAA report found drought covering 59.1% of the contiguous U.S. by September 1, up more than ten percentage points from early August, even as Hurricane Lala dumped record summer rainfall on Hawaii.
Scientists trace the heat to fossil fuels, not just El Niño
Several climate scientists interviewed by the Associated Press said the underlying driver isn’t the El Niño pattern currently warming the tropical Pacific, but the accumulated effect of burning coal, oil and natural gas. “It is now time to stop acting surprised that our warming planet keeps getting warmer,” Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler said, adding that the real question is “whether we’re going to do anything about it or just stand there while the climate train runs us over.”
Imperial College London climate scientist Friederike Otto put a finer point on the mechanism: El Niño is “starting to ramp up the heat,” she said, but the underlying driver “remains our relentless burning of fossil fuels,” and climate change makes every El Niño hotter. Berkeley Earth’s Zeke Hausfather went further, arguing that August setting the record instead of the typically hotter July is itself a sign that warming is accelerating, and forecasting that 2026 is increasingly likely to beat 2024 as the warmest year on record, with 2027 likely to beat both and potentially reach as high as 1.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels on the back of an unusually strong El Niño.
Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said the current El Niño is forecast to break strength records in the coming months, and that heat waves, storms, floods and wildfires will keep getting more frequent and more dangerous as global temperatures continue climbing. Burgess made a similar point, noting that the climate system is “operating well outside the range we would have expected just a decade ago,” with impacts that have moved from abstract projections to schools closing, hospitals overwhelmed, roads melting and train lines buckling.
United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell tied the numbers to a running cost. Until humanity stops burning “colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas,” he said, the resulting pollution will keep “baking our planet,” with extreme heat “killing millions and costing trillions” and straining transport and health systems worldwide. Copernicus and NOAA’s August numbers, gathered independently and released within a day of each other, gave that warning a fresh, matching data point rather than a projection.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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