Record heat in August this year has made it the joint warmest month alongside July 2023. It was also the first month since November 2025 when global temperatures were 1.65°C higher than the pre-industrial level baseline, shooting the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C yet again.

In its latest update, Copernicus, the European Union’s (EU) Earth Observation programme, has also confirmed that this summer was the warmest summer on record for Western Europe.

Scientists attribute this record heat to the combined effect of the burning of fossil fuels and the strong El Niño conditions.

“August 2026 was a remarkable month in the global climate record. It was both the warmest August and the warmest month ever recorded, with global temperatures reaching 1.65°C above pre-industrial levels, marking the return of global temperatures above 1.5°C,” said Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

“Combined with record global sea surface temperatures and the warmest summer on record for Western Europe, these observations show how climate change is driving extremes across both the atmosphere and the oceans. The impacts of these conditions are increasingly being felt by communities, economies and ecosystems across the world,” Burgess said.

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August 2026 – a record-breaking month

Average sea temperature also reached record highs in August over the extra-polar ocean, the water belts adjacent to the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

August 2026 was 1.65°C above the estimated pre-industrial 1850-1900 average, marking the first month above 1.5°C since November 2025. Global leaders hoped to limit global warming to 1.5°C, but this has now been breached more than once.

The period from June to August 2026 was also the joint-warmest period on record globally, on par with record-breaking temperatures in 2024.

Western Europe sees warmest summer on record

The average temperature over European land in August 2026 was 20.26°C, which is 1.10°C above the 1991-2020 average for the month. This makes it the fourth-warmest August on record.

Overall, summer 2026 (June to August) was the third warmest on record for Europe, behind 2024 and 2022. Heat has killed over 200,000 people over the past four years alone in Europe, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Western Europe in particular experienced its warmest summer on record, surpassing the long-standing 2003 record. The 2026 season was marked by a succession of exceptionally early, persistent and intense heatwaves across the region.

“Climate is sometimes seen as a partisan issue: as territory in the culture wars. That is palpably false. And we’ve just seen why: Europe’s summer has been hot as hell. This is the price of global fossil fuel addiction hitting home,” said Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, in an address to the European Parliament Committee.

“Understandably, Europe wants affordability, economic stability, energy security, and policy-making autonomy. Clean energy is the surest path to deliver, cheaply and safely,” he said.

Much of the region and large parts of central and eastern Europe also saw widespread dryness in August, in some cases persisting since May, with severe drought conditions reported in France, the UK, Hungary, Romania and Serbia.

In contrast, some regions like western Iberia, the Alpine region, northeastern Europe, eastern Türkiye and adjacent regions saw wetter-than-average conditions that caused local flooding in several areas.

Extreme weather was a global phenomenon

In August 2026, Arctic sea ice extent ranked 12th lowest for the month, with particularly low sea ice cover north of Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya, in the Russian Arctic sector.

Antarctic sea ice extent ranked fourth lowest for August, with below-average sea ice cover most pronounced in the Amundsen Sea and Indian Ocean sector.

Much of the southern USA and northern Mexico, parts of Canada, the Maghreb, part of the Horn of Africa, Siberia, large parts of Central Asia, China, South America, South Africa, and northern Australia were drier than average.

Wetter-than-average regions in August 2026 included the eastern USA and Canada, Alaska, parts of western and eastern Russia, the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, Chile and southeastern Brazil, as well as easternmost Asia, including eastern China, Taiwan and Japan.

Image Credits: Craig Manners/Unsplash, C3S/ECMWF.