August ties for hottest month on record, EU climate agency says

September 10, 2026 at 07:05 AM2 min

This digest was compiled by AI from multiple sources — links to the originals are below.

August was the joint-hottest month ever recorded, tying with July 2023, according to the EU's Copernicus climate service. Temperatures for the month were 1.65C above pre-industrial levels, surpassing the 1.5C threshold agreed by countries to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The record was driven by climate change and the strengthening El Niño, which is expected to push global temperatures even higher over the coming year.

Key Facts

August 2023 tied with July 2023 as the hottest month on record, with temperatures 1.65C above pre-industrial levels.
The record surpassed the 1.5C threshold agreed by countries to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Western Europe experienced its warmest summer on record, exceeding the deadly heat of 2003.
The UK had its hottest summer since records began in 1884, with human-caused climate change making the high mark about 130 times more likely.
The current El Niño is still strengthening and could become one of the most powerful on record, with its biggest impact on global temperatures expected over the coming year.

Record Temperatures

August was the joint-hottest month ever recorded, tying with July 2023, according to the EU's Copernicus climate service. Temperatures for the month were 1.65C above pre-industrial levels, surpassing the 1.5C threshold agreed by countries to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The month capped western Europe's warmest summer, with high temperatures pushing the season past the deadly heat of 2003. The UK had its hottest summer since records began in 1884, a high mark the Met Office found had been made around 130 times more likely by human-caused climate change.

Climate Drivers

The record was driven by a combination of climate change and the rising influence of El Niño, pushing heat into the atmosphere across the Pacific. El Niño is a natural climate pattern in which a band of the eastern Pacific turns unusually warm, releasing vast amounts of stored ocean heat into the atmosphere and nudging global temperatures upwards for around a year. The current El Niño is still strengthening and could become one of the most powerful on record, according to the Copernicus team. The biggest impact of this natural phenomenon on global temperatures is expected to hit over the coming year, meaning the current run of records may have further to go.

Expert Reactions

Dr Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at Copernicus, described August as "a remarkable month in the global climate record". She said the combination of record air temperatures, record ocean heat and Europe's exceptional summer showed how climate change was now driving extremes across "both the atmosphere and the oceans". UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the record clearly showed humanity's impact on the climate, stating: "The evidence is irrefutable: this is the spiralling price of humanity's fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fuelling." Dr Clair Barnes, an extreme weather researcher at Imperial College London, said the figures carried "a very real human cost".