Copernicus Climate Data Confirms Global Temperature Record

Global temperatures pushed past 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in August, tying with July 2023 as the hottest month in recorded history. The milestone arrives as extreme weather disruptions cascade across multiple continents, driven by a combination of industrial fossil fuel emissions and a strengthening El Niño weather pattern.

Copernicus Climate Data Confirm Global Temperature Records

August tied with July 2023 as the world’s warmest month since records began, pushing the planet’s average global temperature to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). With an average global surface air temperature of 16.96 C, last month tied with July 2023 as the world’s warmest month on record, and was 1.65 C hotter than the planet’s average temperature in the 19th century, before humans started burning oil, coal and gas on an industrial scale, C3S said. Emissions from burning these fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change. The service’s records go back to 1940, and are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850.

August was the first month since November 2025 in which the world’s average temperature exceeded 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. While hitting this mark on a monthly basis does not mean the world has yet technically breached the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C target — which refers to an average temperature over decades, rather than a temporary peak — scientists note that currently, the world’s long-term warming level is about 1.4 C above pre-industrial levels. Temperatures of more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial times are significant because that temperature, when measured as a decades-long average, is the level of warming nearly 200 countries vowed to try to prevent under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The U.N. said last week that sticking to the long-term 1.5 C goal is no longer possible, and urged governments to cut CO2 emissions faster, to limit overshooting the target.

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UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the record clearly showed humanity’s impact on the climate, stating that the evidence was irrefutable that this was the spiralling price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it was fuelling.

Widespread Extreme Weather Disrupters Across Continents

The unprecedented temperature data materialized alongside extreme weather and climate-related disasters that raged around the world last month. Scientists have said climate change likely played a role in the landslides and flash floods that killed hundreds in Nepal and China’s Tibet, although the specifics are still being studied. Meanwhile, severe drought struck Hungary and Romania, while wildfires surged from Indonesia to Greece and Belgium.

Western Europe is emerging from its hottest summer ever recorded, with many regions suffering unusually low river flows and soil moisture — adding to farmers’ woes, after a succession of extreme heatwaves since May ravaged crops. Samantha Burgess, strategic lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, stated that they had truly witnessed the impact across Europe of how poorly adapted they were, with roads melting, train lines buckling, schools closing, hospitals completely overwhelmed, and record wildfires for the time of year. The narrative surrounding climate change had genuinely transitioned from a rather abstract concept occurring in a distant location to something disrupting their daily lives, she added.

Alpine Glaciers Retreat and Ocean Temperatures Climb

The impacts of August heat extended far beyond land surfaces. Last month’s extreme heat was not limited to land, as the world’s oceans outside of the polar regions also recorded their joint-highest sea surface temperature for any month on record, C3S said. In Italy, glaciologists say that heat is accelerating the retreat of Alpine glaciers, with one Lombardy glacier losing 31 metres this year and some monitoring delayed because the melt season hasn’t yet ended.

Dr Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at Copernicus, described August as a remarkable month in the global climate record, and stated that its impacts were increasingly being felt by communities, economies and ecosystems across the world. 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, she said.

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The Strengthening El Niño Factor and Future Projections

On top of the ongoing impact of the use of fossil fuels, the rise of a powerful El Niño is making matters worse, researchers have said. 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.

In the tropical Pacific, record-high temperatures were fuelled by the formation of the El Nino weather pattern, which the Copernicus team stated is still strengthening and could become one of the most powerful on record. 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, potentially pushing up global temperatures further in the coming months.