3 min readBengaluruUpdated: Sep 10, 2026 02:37 PM IST
A man walks along the railing of a bridge before diving in the Limmat river during a heatwave in Zurich, Switzerland. (AP Photo)The world has just experienced its warmest August ever. The global-average surface air temperature remained 1.65 degrees Celsius higher than the estimated pre-industrial era values, said the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) on Thursday.
Copernicus, implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), also noted that Europe recorded its warmest summer this year, a phenomenon emerging for the first time since 2003. Last month’s record temperatures tied with the warmest July of 2023, Copernicus confirmed. The period from June to August 2026 was the joint-warmest on record globally, on par with 2024.
“The global-average surface air temperature in August 2026 was 16.96 degrees Celsius, which was 0.85 degree Celsius above the 1991–2020 global average. As such, it was the warmest August globally in the ERA5 dataset (a global dataset), surpassing the previous joint record set in 2023 and 2024,” the report said.
