August 2026 was the hottest month ever recorded worldwide.

August 2026 was the hottest month ever recorded worldwide.

The heat reached unprecedented levels in August across the planet, the European meteorological service Copernicus noted on Thursday, with the hottest month ever recorded globally and the worst summer for Western Europe.

"August 2026 was a remarkable month in the history of global climate," commented Samantha Burgess, a scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), quoted in a monthly Copernicus report drawing these conclusions on Thursday.

"Humans have not experienced temperatures as high as today for, in all likelihood, at least 100,000 years," she added, as reported by AFP.

From New York to Tokyo, via Rome and New Delhi, the summer of 2026 was marked by extreme temperatures throughout the northern hemisphere, disrupting the daily lives of bicycle delivery workers, construction workers, holidaymakers on the beaches, or simply vulnerable people at home.

- 16.96°C -

With an average air temperature of 16.96°C, August 2026 is the hottest month ever recorded, across all months, calculated Copernic, whose data dates back to 1940.

In second place is July 2023 with 16.95°C. Copernic specifies to AFP that it places the two "ex aequo", due to the very narrow margin separating these two measurements.

The period from June to August is also considered the hottest ever recorded globally, tied with 2024, Copernicus said the day after the US weather agency announced the hottest summer recorded in more than 130 years of records in the country.

Other sources of climate data allow scientists to support their conclusions by drawing on elements dating back to a much earlier period. According to them, the current period is probably the warmest Earth has experienced in the last 125,000 years.

"As long as humanity continues to burn colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas, pollution continues to overheat our planet, and extreme heat waves continue to shatter all-time records," UN Climate chief Simon Stiell said in a statement to AFP on Thursday.

"The solutions are just as clear," he continued, citing in particular "a faster transition to clean energy" and "the protection of our forests and the ocean."

The El Niño climate phenomenon is also causing cyclical increases in ocean temperatures this year, leading to droughts and floods. Scientists fear it will exacerbate global warming while amplifying extreme weather events.

"Climate change is making each El Niño episode hotter, and as long as we continue to burn coal, oil and gas, these record-breaking months will simply continue to happen," commented Friederike Otto, professor of climatology at Imperial College London.

- Europe is overheating -

The global average temperature in August was 1.65°C above the average of pre-industrial levels, Copernicus also notes, which is more than the most ambitious limit set in the Paris climate agreement in 2015, for the first time since November 2025. But this 1.5°C limit is understood as an average over many years.

During this scorching summer which affected the bodies of billions of individuals, Western Europe experienced "a succession of exceptionally early, persistent and intense heat waves", and recorded the hottest summer in its history, surpassing that of 2003, Copernicus also notes.

Across the continent, the average air temperature was 20.26°C in August, 1.10°C above the pre-industrial period, the third warmest on record.

France, the United Kingdom, Belgium... Meteorological agencies have been reporting record-breaking summer weather in recent weeks. More than 30,000 excess deaths have also been recorded, according to provisional data published by the EuroMomo platform, which includes statistical data from 23 European countries, and by health authorities, at the end of August.

Heat waves have also largely affected the oceans, notes Copernic, with the average monthly surface temperature of the oceans outside polar regions being the highest ever recorded, equal to March 2024.