At 1.65°C above pre-industrial baseline, how August 2026 is hottest month on record

For nine straight months, global temperatures stayed below the mark the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was built around. This August, the temperatures crossed back over it.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), a service within the European Union’s Earth observation programme, reports that the global average surface air temperature last month was 16.96°C, which is 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.65°C above the estimated 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline. This was the first month above 1.5°C since November 2025.

It is, in fact, the warmest August ever recorded, ahead of the joint record shared by 2023 and 2024, and the joint warmest month ever measured across all calendar months, level with July 2023.

A single month above 1.5°C does not mean the Paris Agreement limit has been broken. That threshold refers to long-term warming, conventionally measured as a 20-year average. However, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has been explicit that temporary exceedances will become more frequent as the underlying trend rises.

But the running average is made of months like August 2026. Year 2024 was the first calendar year to cross 1.5°C. Each additional month over the line drags the 20-year mean upward and shortens the distance to a permanent breach. In its May 2025 decadal update, the WMO put a 70 per cent chance of at least one year between 2025 and 2029 exceeding 1.5°C. August 2026 is a statistic that shortens the odds.While the excessive burning of fossil fuels remains the core reason, a strong El Nio intensifying in the equatorial Pacific, which C3S says could become one of the strongest on record, is what pushed this particular month over the line.

Western Europe closed its warmest summer on record, displacing 2003 after a run of heatwaves that began in May. Severe drought was reported in France, the UK, Hungary, Romania and Serbia, with exceptionally low flows on the Rhine, Danube, Southern Bug and Dnieper. In the Asia-Pacific, El Nio conditions have intensified seasonal wildfires across Indonesia.

India entered this monsoon under an El Nio forecast. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) projected seasonal rainfall at 90 per cent of the Long Period Average, with a 60 per cent probability of a deficient season. June ran a deficit of 35.4 per cent; July recovered, delivering 283.3 mm against a normal of 280.5 mm, cutting the June-July shortfall to 13 per cent.

On July 31, IMD forecast below-normal rain for both August and September, and above-normal maximum temperatures across most of the country. Kharif sowing, which was down 20.8 per cent year-on-year in early July, had narrowed to roughly 3 per cent by month-end. ICRA expects the Kharif season to close 1-2 per cent below last year.

The tell-tale month is actually September. The Indian government's position is that the inverse relationship between El Nio and rainfall in the country is strongest in September. A sizzling August, inside a strong El Nino, at a time the planet is already experiencing significant global warming has put measurable duress on agriculture and water reservoirs across India. State governments hold out till October to declare districts as ‘drought affected’, but farmers and research institutes measuring precipitation and government agencies measuring reservoir water levels already know the obvious.