Copernicus: September 2026 was the second-warmest September on record globally

Copernicus: September 2026 was the second-warmest September on record globally

.. And the second consecutive month with temperatures more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level, reports the Copernicus, the EU’s Earth observation and monitoring programme. For Europe as a whole, it was the third-warmest September on record, and the joint warmest for western Europe.

Global surface air temperature anomalies for September 2026 (Copernicus)

Here in Europe:

  • In September 2026, most of Europe experienced above-average temperatures.
  • Warmer-than-average conditions were most pronounced across much of western Europe, continuing the unusual warmth seen throughout the summer in this part of the continent. The largest anomalies occurred over southern France, Portugal, Spain and parts of Italy, reaching 4–6°C above average. As during much of the summer, the unusual warmth was associated with persistent high-pressure conditions over the region.
  • Across much of this region, as well as in southern Ireland, average temperatures for September were the highest since at least 1979 in the ERA5 dataset. According to national reports, Portugal experienced its warmest September on record, and France and Ireland their second warmest (based on preliminary data for Ireland).

Outside of Europe:

  • Outside Europe (discussed below), monthly temperatures in September 2026 were above average across the majority of continental regions outside of Antarctica.
  • As observed in August, the West Antarctic region showed the largest positive temperature anomalies worldwide, reaching 10–15°C above average in September. This pattern is consistent with the typical El Niño teleconnection in the region, characterised by high pressure over the Amundsen Sea that channels warm marine air toward this part of the continent.
  • Pronounced warm anomalies were also observed across western Siberia, the central United States, northern Canada, eastern Africa.
  • Colder-than-average conditions prevailed across Greenland, the western United States, parts of South America, Africa, and Asia, northern Australia, and the region around the Weddell Sea and the adjacent part of Antarctica to the south (Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf).
Surface air temperature anomaly September 2026 (Copernicus)

In the oceans:

  • The average sea surface temperature (SST) across the extra-polar ocean (60°S-60°N) for September 2026 was 21.05°C, the highest value on record for September. It was only slightly below the all-time record set in August (21.07°C).
  • Since 19 June, the daily extra-polar SST has been the highest recorded for each calendar day.
Sea surface temperature anomaly September 2026 (Copernicus)

And the intensification of El Niño:

  • Much of the central and eastern tropical Pacific continued to show record-high SSTs for the month, as has been the case since spring. SST anomalies across the region increased further since August, reflecting the continued intensification of El Niño.
  • Monthly SSTs for September were more than 3°C above average across the central and equatorial Pacific, including much of the Nino 3.4 region. The largest anomalies occurred farther east along the Peruvian coast and west of the Galápagos, reaching 6–7°C above average in those areas.
  • The monthly SST for the Niño 3.4 region reached an all-time high of 29.70°C in September, exceeding the peak values of the previous very strong El Niño events of 1982/1983, 1997/1998, and 2015/2016, which all occurred between November and January. The corresponding September SST anomaly was also the highest on record, at 2.99°C above the 1991–2020 average, exceeding the previous record of 2.81°C set in December 1997.
  • According to the World Meteorological Organization, El Niño is expected to intensify into a very strong event over the coming months, peaking towards the end of 2026 and continuing until at least February 2027.

The full release is here.

Guardian: Corporations claim their fossil fuel emissions are a drop in the ocean. But what if we could count the real cost?

Guardian: Corporations claim their fossil fuel emissions are a drop in the ocean. But what if we could count the real cost?

Below, from a Guardian analysis of the Carbon Impacts Tracer, a new tool developed by the Australian National University and the Lethal Humidity Global Council that helps visualise the connection between CO₂ emissions from specific fossil fuel projects or companies and their attributable climate impacts by translating abstract emission quantities into tangible consequences, using peer-reviewed scientific relationships:

The biggest coal project before authorities in New South Wales, the Hunter Valley Operations mine, will emit the equivalent of about 809m tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide if it wins approval.

That number, for most people, will carry little meaning, as might the calculation that adding that amount of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere will cause an extra 0.00036C of global heating.

But what if the public was instead told that that amount of carbon dioxide would expose almost half a million people to unprecedented heat, or kill nearly 15 million coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef every time it bleaches, or lead to more than 100 additional deaths from heatwaves in Europe to the end of this century.

I’ll give it a test drive over the weekend.

Link.

Jeff Goodell on Attribution Science in the NYT: The Science That Has Oil Companies Running Scared – Gift Link

Jeff Goodell on Attribution Science in the NYT: The Science That Has Oil Companies Running Scared – Gift Link

Goodell, author of ‘The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet’ argues that no matter how the US Supreme Court rules in a liability lawsuit brought against Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy by the city of Boulder, it will not kill attempts to hold those responsible for the impact of climate change accountable.

In fact, he writes, “the age of accountability for the fossil fuel industry has just begun and has a bright future. The reason for that is the emergence of a powerful field of climate science known as attribution science”, which measures how much human-caused climate change influences the frequency, intensity, and likelihood of specific extreme weather events. [Here is a Union of Concerned Scientists piece with a longer explanation on how it works.]

The simple truth is, the climate accountability genie is out of the bottle, and the Supreme Court is unlikely to jam it back in. Even if the court sides with Suncor, attribution science will continue to move forward, filling in the gaps between cause and effect in our understanding of how climate works.

And

In the end, the promise of attribution science is that it helps us see a storm or a heat wave or a flood not as an act of a god or the whim of Mother Nature, but as a disaster that has been knowingly shaped or intensified by particular human actions. And by identifying perpetrators and victims, it transforms the question of who should pay for climate damages into a moral question as much as a legal one.

Gift link.

Related coverage on the case:

Bill McKibben in NYT Op-ed: ‘We can’t keep on like this. It’s simply inhuman.’ – Gift Link

Bill McKibben in NYT Op-ed: ‘We can’t keep on like this. It’s simply inhuman.’ – Gift Link

Lots of people I know are feeling this way.

In a NYT op-ed headlined ‘I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This.’, Bill Mckibben writes:

Psychologists have claimed that evolutionary biology leaves humans ill equipped to deal with giant, slow-moving problems. But suddenly we live in a moment when problems are speeding and piling up.

The climate crisis now consists of walls of water sweeping down Nepali rivers, obliterating entire towns in the blink of an eye, and wildfires that wipe out California neighborhoods in hours. And we’re confronting the birth and Bunyanesque growth of a new technology, artificial intelligence, that, according to some of its creators, is fairly likely to kill us all in the near future. We have to sit and listen as men worth unfathomable sums speculate about whether our species will survive their companies’ initial public offerings.

Six of the biggest fossil fuel companies are projected to earn $2,967 a second in profits in 2026, new Oxfam research finds, ahead of the first global conference this week on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia. This marks an increase of almost $37 million a day compared to the 2025 profits of these six corporations – Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and TotalEnergies. Their total projected fossil fuel profits of 2026 are $94 billion: enough to provide solar power for the energy needs of almost 50 million people in Africa.

And concludes:

.. if human survival and economic resilience are important goals, so is a world calm enough to meet the needs of the human nervous system. We can’t keep on like this — it’s simply inhuman. We’re creating a world that’s fit only for something artificial.

Gift link.

Inside Climate News: Europe’s Extreme Summer Triggered Cascading Climate Shocks

Inside Climate News: Europe’s Extreme Summer Triggered Cascading Climate Shocks

A good summary by Bob Berwyn of the Copernicus Summer 2026 report released yesterday, on a summer of “record heat, severe drought and compounding impacts that tested Europe’s infrastructure and resilience” that affected just about everything, including “water supplies, energy systems, transport, ecosystems and agriculture, along with human health”.

Link.

Le Monde: Summer 2026 was hottest on record in Western Europe, yet still no political awakening

Le Monde: Summer 2026 was hottest on record in Western Europe, yet still no political awakening

In their report on the Copernicus Summer Review 2026, Le Monde notes the EU’s inability to act on climate, in spite of EU Commision President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledgment that “On climate change, this summer was the summer of truth.”

“One of the defining characteristics of summer this year is that it was not a single record; it was multiple records,” said Samantha Burgess, climate strategy lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. “We’ve seen these compound impacts of climate change where we’ve seen record heat, record dryness, record wildfire risk.”

But at the EU’s political level, nothing, other than an absence of any real shock.

“There was no reaction; the climate issue is not among the priorities,” said Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, head of the energy center at the Institut Jacques Delors.

Link.

Guardian: World’s oceans absorbed record heat equal to 40 times annual global energy use

Guardian: World’s oceans absorbed record heat equal to 40 times annual global energy use

All the energy used by the earth’s entire population in one year all adds up to about half of a zettajoule.

A record-breaking 23 zettajoules of heat was sunk into the world’s seas last year, leaving ocean waters hotter, higher and less hospitable, a report has found.

The explosive addition of thermal energy, which was almost 40 times greater than all the energy humanity used that year, comes amid far-reaching changes to the deep water bodies fundamental to life on Earth.

Sea levels have risen by about 3.8mm per year since 1999, and at a faster rate of 4.2mm per year between 2012 and 2025, according to the 10th edition of the Copernicus ocean state report. It found the global ocean has become 17% more acidic in the last 40 years.

And

The scientists found a clear acceleration of sea level rise in the western Mediterranean, even as the eastern part showed uneven gains. The entire sea has warmed by 0.32C per decade, the report found, driving up marine heatwaves, particularly in the last few years.

The report comes as western Europe experiences an unusually warm September right after its ruinously fiery summer, with temperatures hitting 40C highs in parts of Spain and Portugal last week. Hot coastal waters exacerbate heatwaves on land by adding heat during nights that would otherwise cool down.

Link.

 Copernicus: August 2026 was the Hottest Month on Record

Copernicus: August 2026 was the hottest Month on Record.

Records are made to be broken, I guess. Or, at least tied.

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reports that August 2026 was the hottest month in recorded history, tying with July 2023. August 2026 was 1.65°C above the estimated pre-industrial 1850-1900 average, marking the first month above 1.5°C since November 2025.

The data visualisation above, produced using C3S data, shows surface air temperature anomalies for August 2026 across Europe, Africa, and parts of the Arctic and Asia. 

A few Global superlatives from the monthly report:

  • The global-average surface air temperature in August 2026 was 16.96°C, 0.85°C above the 1991–2020 average, making it the warmest August globally in the ERA5 dataset, surpassing the previous joint record set in 2023 and 2024.
  • August 2026 was also the joint-warmest month ever recorded globally across all calendar months, on par with July 2023.
  • August 2026 was 1.65°C above the estimated pre-industrial 1850-1900 average, marking the first month above 1.5°C since November 2025.
  • The period from June to August 2026 was the joint-warmest on record globally, on par with 2024.

And here in Europe:

  • The average temperature over European land in August 2026 was 20.26°C, 1.10°C above the 1991-2020 average for the month, making it the fourth-warmest August on record.
  • Summer 2026 (June to August) was the third warmest on record for Europe, behind 2024 and 2022.
  • Western Europe experienced its warmest summer on record, surpassing the long-standing 2003 record. The 2026 season was marked by a succession of exceptionally early, persistent and intense heatwaves across the region.

And the world’s seas:

  • The average sea surface temperature (SST) for extra-polar oceans (60°S–60°N) in August 2026 was the highest on record for the month, at 21.07°C, surpassing the previous August record of 20.98°C set in 2023.
  • The average extra-polar SST for August 2026 was also the joint highest on record across all calendar months, on par with March 2024.
  • SSTs remained exceptionally high across much of the tropical Pacific, where El Niño conditions are present and forecast to further strengthen in the coming months, potentially into one of the strongest El Niño events on record.
  • Around Europe, SSTs reached record highs for August along the Atlantic coast and in the western Mediterranean, associated with widespread strong or severe marine heatwave conditions.

In the report press release, Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), said:

“August 2026 was a remarkable month in the global climate record. It was both the warmest August and the warmest month ever recorded, with global temperatures reaching 1.65°C above pre-industrial levels, marking the return of global temperatures above 1.5°C. Combined with record global sea surface temperatures and the warmest summer on record for Western Europe, these observations show how climate change is driving extremes across both the atmosphere and the oceans. The impacts of these conditions are increasingly being felt by communities, economies and ecosystems across the world.”

A few media reports: