August 2026 was the joint-hottest month ever recorded globally, matching July 2023, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service has said. Global temperatures reached 16.96°C, or 1.65°C above pre-industrial levels, in a month that combined record air temperatures, record ocean heat and an exceptional European summer.
Dr Samantha Burgess, Copernicus’s strategic lead for climate, called August “a remarkable month in the global climate record”. The service said its data showed a difference of less than 0.02°C between August 2026 and July 2023, which meets its rule for declaring a joint ranking. The previous record was 16.95°C in July 2023.
Copernicus records extend back to 1940, and July 2023 had previously stood as the all-time monthly high in that dataset. The temperatures now being recorded are higher than humans have experienced for at least the last 100,000 years.
Scientists primarily attributed the extreme heat to human-caused climate change. They said the rising influence of El Niño, a natural climate pattern that warms a band of the eastern Pacific and releases stored ocean heat into the atmosphere, added to the temperatures.
The El Niño currently under way is still strengthening and could become one of the most powerful on record, according to the Copernicus team. Its largest effect on global temperatures is expected over the coming year, creating the prospect of further records in the months ahead.
Ocean temperatures also tied their record high in August, extending a three-month run of record-breaking warmth across the world’s oceans. The concurrent warmth in the sea and atmosphere formed part of the conditions behind the global milestone, Copernicus said.
Western Europe recorded its hottest summer on record after successive heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. High temperatures pushed the season beyond the heat of 2003, which was deadly. Between mid-July and mid-August, estimates from the EuroMomo monitoring platform put heat-related excess deaths in Europe at more than 32,000.
The UK also had its hottest summer since records began in 1884. The Met Office found that human-caused climate change had made the UK’s hottest summer around 130 times more likely.
Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said: “The evidence is irrefutable: this is the spiralling price of humanity's fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fuelling”.
The Copernicus findings place the August record in a wider pattern of rising temperatures shaped by long-term human-caused warming and a strengthening natural climate cycle. Scientists expect El Niño’s greatest contribution to global temperatures over the coming year, although the service did not give precise projections for how much higher temperatures may climb or identify the regions most likely to see future records.
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