Earth’s hottest month ever recorded was this past August. These two factors are to blame
Earth cooked to its hottest month on record in August, blowing far past a key climate threshold , due to the dangerous double whammy of human-caused climate change and a supersized El Nino , according to the European climate service Copernicus. August’s sizzle also helped push the globe and the United States to swelter through the hottest Northern Hemisphere summer scientists have measured. Last…
Earth sweltered through its hottest month ever recorded in August, breaking a key climate threshold due to a combination of human-induced climate change and a powerful El Nino event, according to the European climate service Copernicus. August's sizzling temperatures pushed the globe and the United States into the hottest Northern Hemisphere summer ever measured.
Last month, the world's average temperature was 62.53 degrees Fahrenheit (16.96 degrees Celsius), just one-hundredth of a degree Celsius higher than the previous record set in July 2023. However, since that measurement is also the level of uncertainty, scientists consider it a tie, said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead for Copernicus.
Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist, said in an email, "This is occurring exactly as forecast by scientists literally decades ago." August's global temperature was 1.65 degrees Celsius (nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, surpassing the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold established by the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
The past eight months have all been the hottest on record. This summer has been exceptional, with records that were once 100 years old being broken in the U.S., according to Burgess. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that for the first time, summer in the Lower 48 states was hotter than during the peak of the Dust Bowl in 1936.
Global ocean temperatures in August tied a March 2024 all-time record, while August 22 set a record for the hottest day ever recorded in the world's seas. The U.S. experienced a summer that was nearly four-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than the mark set 90 years earlier. This summer also tied with 2024 for the hottest on record globally.
These record-breaking temperatures are a sign that human-caused climate change is accelerating, according to Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. While El Nino contributes to the heat, it is not the primary cause, as human emissions of fossil fuels are the main driver, exacerbating the effects of El Nino. Scientists predict that 2026 may end up being hotter than 2024 and potentially reach a level of 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, driven by an unprecedentedly strong El Nino event.
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