By Abbas Nazil
August 2026 tied July 2023 as the world’s hottest month on record, with global temperatures reaching 1.65°C above the pre-industrial average, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The record heat was accompanied by severe drought conditions, heatwaves and exceptionally high sea surface temperatures across several parts of the world.
Copernicus said August marked the first time since November last year that the global temperature had exceeded the 1.5°C threshold associated with the Paris Agreement.
The pre-industrial period is measured as 1850 to 1900, before fossil fuels were burned on the scale seen in the modern era.
Across Europe, extreme heat contributed to drought conditions in the United Kingdom, France, Hungary, Serbia and Romania.
Major rivers, including the Rhine and Danube, also recorded exceptionally low flows during the month.
In Serbia, falling water levels in the Danube exposed a World War II-era ship that had been submerged beneath the river.
The latest global temperature record came shortly after the UK Met Office reported that summer 2026 was the hottest summer ever recorded in the country.
The average temperature during the British summer was 0.4°C higher than the previous record set in 2025.
Sea surface temperatures also reached record levels in August, with waters outside the polar regions recording an average temperature of 21.07°C.
Copernicus said the figure was tied with the previous record recorded in March 2024.
Scientists attributed the extreme temperatures to human-driven climate change resulting from continued fossil fuel emissions, alongside the influence of the El Niño weather phenomenon.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, described August as a “remarkable month”.
She said the combination of record global sea surface temperatures and extreme atmospheric heat demonstrated how climate change was driving increasingly severe conditions across the planet.
Burgess added that the impacts of the conditions were increasingly being felt by communities, economies and ecosystems around the world.
The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, requires countries to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to keep warming to 1.5°C.
Scientists have warned that sustained warming beyond the 1.5°C level increases the risks of extreme heat, drought, flooding and rising sea levels.
The latest temperature record comes ahead of the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP31, scheduled to take place in Antalya, Turkey, in November.
Gareth Redmond-King of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit described the latest record as another “warning siren” over the effects of climate change.
He called on world leaders attending COP31 to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions towards net zero while strengthening resilience against climate impacts that are already unavoidable.
