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August was the hottest month on record, tied with July 2023, according to data published on Thursday by the European climate observatory Copernicus.
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Last month, the global average air temperature reached 16.96°C, which is 1.65°C higher than the pre-industrial reference period of 1850–1900. August was the first month since November 2025 to exceed 1.5°C, the limit set by the Paris Agreement on climate change.
The extra-polar oceans also broke a record for their average temperature last month, due to global warming, Copernicus points out. The average temperature reached 21.07°C, the highest ever recorded for August, surpassing the record set in 2023.
“August 2026 was a remarkable month in the global climate record. It was both the warmest August and the warmest month ever recorded”, declared Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts).
“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”, she added.
Hottest summer ever in Western Europe
For the European continent specifically, these figures mark the end of the hottest summer ever recorded in Western Europe, with prolonged, intense and early heatwaves beginning as early as May. For the region, the summer of 2026 broke the record set during the same period in 2003.
In August this year, the average temperature reached 20.26°C over European land, making last month the fourth-warmest August on record, according to Copernicus.
The continent also suffered from widespread drought, with exceptionally low water levels in rivers such as the Rhine, the Danube, the Vistula, the Rhône and the Po. The drier-than-average conditions also led to numerous wildfires in several regions across Europe.
“The evidence is irrefutable: this is the spiralling price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fuelling”, declared, Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary.
“Until humanity stops burning colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas, the pollution this causes will keep baking our planet, and extreme heat will keep smashing all-time records”, Stiell added.
For the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary the solution to preventing new temperature records from being set is clear: “a faster shift to clean energy.”
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