August 2026 tied as the hottest month ever recorded globally, pushing average temperatures above the critical 1.5°C threshold as extreme weather swept across several regions, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said.
The month tied with July 2023 for the highest global average temperature on record and was 1.65°C warmer than the 19th-century pre-industrial average, according to Copernicus.
It was the first month since November 2025 when global temperatures rose more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold that nearly 200 countries agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to pursue efforts to avoid exceeding in the long term.
A single month above 1.5°C does not mean the Paris Agreement target has been permanently breached, as the goal refers to average warming over the long term.
The record heat coincided with a series of extreme weather events and climate-related disasters.
Scientists said climate change likely contributed to conditions behind deadly landslides and flash floods in Nepal and Tibet, although the precise role of warming is still under study.
Wildfires also spread from Indonesia to Greece and Belgium, while Hungary and Romania experienced severe drought.
Western Europe recorded its hottest summer on record, with unusually low river flows and soil moisture putting furtherpressure on farmers after repeated heatwaves damaged crops.
“The narrative around climate change has really transitioned from being quite an abstract concept that happens in a faraway place, to disrupting our daily lives,” Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts told Reuters.
She pointed to melting roads, buckling railway lines, school closures, overwhelmed hospitals and record wildfires as examples of Europe’s vulnerability to rising temperatures.
The heat extended to the world’s oceans, with sea surface temperatures outside the polar regions tying the highest level recorded for any month.
In the tropical Pacific, the developing El Niño weather pattern helped drive record temperatures.
El Niño is forecast to strengthen in the coming months, potentially adding more heat to a planet already warming because of greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas.
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Four people were killed, including a child, in Ukrainian strikes on the Russian port city of Novorossiysk overnight, according to the governor of the Krasnodar region. Ukraine's drone forces commander, Robert Brovdi, said Russian military ships were destroyed in the attacks.
A TV channel was struck during a live broadcast on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, as Russian strikes on Kyiv killed at least three people, the city's Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Meanwhile, drones hit civilian infrastructure in Russia's southwestern Saratov region.
Wildfires have broken out in Türkiye’s Antalya province, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate as strong winds fuelled the flames.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) allegedly launched two ballistic missile attacks against a U.S. Navy warship over the past two days.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Wednesday they attacked two U.S. vessels and eight oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, calling the strikes a response to a U.S. attack on five Iranian tankers.
Increasingly intense wildfires and heat waves are threatening global efforts to improve air quality and protect public health, the United Nations’ weather agency has warned.
Vast flocks of storks passed through Türkiye and the Bosporus this week as part of their annual autumn migration from European breeding grounds toward Africa and the Middle East.
China's coastal areas and southern regions are preparing for days of intense precipitation, with tens of thousands of people evacuated as Typhoon Narra tracks inland and another storm churns toward the country's eastern seaboard.
A wildfire in Croatia driven by strong winds descended on the tourist town of Omis overnight, engulfing houses, forcing about 1,000 people to evacuate to safety and injuring dozens, fire brigade and health officials said on Friday.
Rhossi, a rare Kemp’s ridley sea turtle that washed up near death on a Welsh beach in 2023, has returned to Texas after more than two years of rehabilitation in the UK.
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