August 2026 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth, tying July 2023 in the Copernicus climate record and capping a summer of broken heat marks.
The European Union's climate agency reported that the global average temperature last month was 1.65°C above the pre-industrial average. July 2026 had already tied July 2024 as the second-hottest July on record, and June 2026 was the second-hottest June, so all three months of the summer landed near the top of the record.
The month carried its own grim footnote: the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared on Wednesday that the country had just had its hottest summer on record, beating a mark set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
Climate change has lifted background temperatures, and a strengthening El Niño piled on more heat. Such events typically add 0.1 to 0.2°C globally. This year's El Niño is forecast to reach record strength, and its full effect will not be felt until next year — meaning the summer of 2027 may be hotter still.
The human toll was severe. Researchers estimate that as many as 35,000 people died in heatwaves in Germany, France and Spain alone. Record fires burned across parts of Europe, including the first documented fire cloud in France, and threatened a key NASA observatory in Spain; smoke from Canadian and northern US wildfires blanketed the Northeast.
"August 2026 was a remarkable month in the global climate record," said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Pointing to record global sea surface temperatures and the warmest summer on record for Western Europe, she said the observations "show how climate change is driving extremes across both the atmosphere and the oceans".
A single hot month does not breach the 1.5°C threshold that scientists say the world must stay below over the long term, but it is a sign of how close the planet is drifting to it. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned that this summer's heat, fires and floods are "a warning of what lies ahead" and called for an "overshoot of ambition" to keep any breach small and short.
