Earth has just sweltered through its hottest August since modern record-keeping began in 1850, according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, which published its global climate report on 10 September 2026. The month's global surface temperature came in 2.38 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.32 degrees Celsius, above the 20th-century average, eclipsing the previous tied records set in 2023 and 2024 by 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit. It was the 48th consecutive August with global temperatures above the 20th-century average, and all 10 of the warmest Augusts on record have occurred since 2016. NASA also rated August the hottest on record, while the European Copernicus Climate Change Service rated it the hottest month in recorded history, tied with July 2023. ## A Record Heat and a Record Extent The scale of the anomaly was global. A record 13.2 percent of the world's land and ocean surfaces set record-high August temperatures, the largest areal extent for any August on record, and no land or ocean area experienced record-cold temperatures. Global sea surface temperatures reached an all-time high, and the June-August season averaged 1.21 degrees Celsius above the 20th-century norm, the highest in NOAA's 177-year record. Regionally, North America and Africa both recorded their warmest August, Asia its second-warmest, the Arctic its third, and South America and Europe their fourth. Among major weather stations with records going back to at least 1980, at least 364 set all-time heat records during the month, including Yangsan, South Korea, at 42.5 degrees Celsius on 2 August, a new national record. El Nino conditions drove much of the pattern. Weekly sea surface temperatures in the benchmark Nino 3.4 region stood 1.8 degrees Celsius above average on 8 September, well beyond the 1.5-degree strong-event threshold and approaching the 2-degree mark of a so-called super El Nino. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center puts the chance of El Nino continuing through early 2027 at essentially 100 percent. "it is now looking like 2026 is likely (~75% chance) to be the warmest year on record in ERA5," climate scientist Zeke Hausfather wrote on 2 September, adding that 2027 is likely to run away with the record. NOAA's own statistical outlook is more conservative, giving 2026 a greater than 98 percent chance of ranking among the three warmest years but only a 1.4 percent chance of taking the top spot, though that model does not explicitly account for El Nino. ## Ice at Record Lows, Storms Above Average The heat is showing up at the poles. Global sea ice extent was the fourth smallest for August in the 48-year satellite record, covering 8.50 million square miles, some 870,000 square miles below the 1991-2020 average. Arctic extent was the seventh-lowest on record, and Antarctic extent the third-lowest. "Last month was the 3rd lowest Antarctic sea ice extent on record for the month of August," climate scientist Zack Labe reported, noting it stood 1,260,000 square kilometers below the 1981-2010 August average. Tropical cyclone activity ran above average with 19 tropical storms worldwide, five reaching hurricane or typhoon intensity and four attaining major status. Super Typhoon Dolphin brought historic rainfall to parts of China and southern Japan, while Hurricane Lala passed near Hawaii's Big Island, the first storm in decades to bring hurricane-strength conditions there.