Amidst a strengthening El Nino, August was the joint warmest month ever recorded globally, tied with July 2023, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday. The global average surface air temperature was 1.65°C higher than the estimated pre-industrial baseline this August, also making it the first month to exceed 1.5°C since November 2025, it said.
Crops lost, yields went down and food prices up – and are set to rise further,” Stiell said, calling for countries to work in partnership and forge International alliances that secure supply chains for clean energy and new industries. C3S said in a statement on Thursday. Meanwhile, record high SSTs were seen across the tropical Pacific, an area where a potentially extreme El Niño event continues to intensify. The impacts of this event are already being felt over land, with conditions favouring the intensification of seasonal wildfires across Indonesia.. Copernicus is the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme. It includes assistance from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) — both as a research institute and operational service which gives global numerical weather predictions. “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. “It has hammered Europe’s infrastructure, businesses, and economies. We’ve seen mass evacuations. Power stations closed and trade routes choked.
This comes a week after the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on August 3 said El Niño has firmly established and will intensify into a ‘very strong’ event in the coming months. It had attached a near 100% likelihood that it will persist through February 2027, warning of impacts on rainfall and temperature patterns globally. A day prior to that, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) had said global temperature rise is likely to cross the 1.5°C threshold by the end of this decade, pushing climate risks and impacts such as intensified extreme weather to increasingly dangerous heights. “With a global average surface air temperature 1.65°C higher than the estimated pre-industrial baseline, this August was the first month to exceed 1.5°C since November 2025. Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF said August 2026 was a remarkable month in the global climate record.
Speaking at the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety in Brussels on the same day, UN Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell said the impacts of climate were already visible, with this summer’s climate-driven extreme heat killing tens of thousands of people.
