August ties record as hottest month ever measured

August tied for the hottest month ever recorded, as human-caused climate change and a strengthening El Niño pushed temperatures far beyond a key international climate benchmark, the European Union’s Copernicus climate service said.

The month’s average global temperature was 16.96 Celsius, or 62.53 Fahrenheit, according to Copernicus. NPR reported that the figure was technically one-hundredth of a degree Celsius above the previous all-time monthly record set in July 2023, but because that difference is within the margin of uncertainty, Copernicus considers the months tied.

Globally, August was 1.65 Celsius, nearly 3 Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels. That exceeds the 1.5 Celsius threshold countries agreed to pursue under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. A single month above that level does not mean the threshold has been permanently crossed, but scientists said it points to a continuing trend toward breaching it.

Dr. Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at Copernicus, called August “a remarkable month in the global climate record.” She said its impacts were “increasingly being felt by communities, economies and ecosystems across the world.”

Burgess said the combination of record air temperatures, record ocean heat and an exceptional European summer showed climate change driving extremes across “both the atmosphere and the oceans.” Global monthly ocean temperatures in August tied the March 2024 record for the warmest month measured, and Aug. 22 set a record for the hottest day recorded in the world’s seas, Copernicus said, according to NPR.

The record month also capped western Europe’s warmest summer on record, surpassing the deadly heat of 2003, the BBC reported. In the United Kingdom, the Met Office said the country had its hottest summer since records began in 1884, a mark it found was made about 130 times more likely by human-caused climate change.

Dr. Clair Barnes, an extreme weather researcher at Imperial College London, said the heat across the UK and Europe carried “a very real human cost,” disrupting schools, straining hospitals, hitting food production, fueling fires and drought, and claiming “tens of thousands of lives.” She rejected the idea that such summers were simply the “new normal.”

“Until we stop burning fossil fuels these records will continue to tumble, and the extremes will worsen faster than we are able to adapt,” Barnes said. “Crucially, how much worse we allow it to get remains within our hands.”

In the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the Lower 48 states had their hottest summer on record, NPR reported. June through August 2026 averaged 74.37 Fahrenheit, or 23.54 Celsius, nearly four-tenths of a degree warmer than the previous mark set during the 1936 Dust Bowl. NPR also reported that August set a U.S. heat record, averaging 75.58 Fahrenheit, or 24.21 Celsius, with an average daytime high of 88.56 Fahrenheit, or 31.42 Celsius.

Scientists cited both the long-term buildup of greenhouse gases and the rising influence of El Niño, a natural climate pattern in which unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific releases stored ocean heat into the atmosphere and raises global temperatures for about a year. Copernicus researchers said the current El Niño is still strengthening and could become one of the most powerful on record.

Several scientists told NPR that El Niño is contributing to the heat, but that the main driver remains emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas. “While El Niño is starting to ramp up the heat, the underlying driver remains our relentless burning of fossil fuels,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the record shows humanity’s impact on the climate. “The evidence is irrefutable: this is the spiralling price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fuelling,” he said.