Yale Climate Connections
April 2026 was the world’s fourth-warmest April in analyses of global weather data going back to 1850, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, reported April 11. NASA and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service rated April 2026 as the third-warmest April. The global-average temperature for January-April 2026 was the fifth-highest on record, NOAA said.
According to NCEI’s statistical analysis, there is about a 93% chance that 2026 will rank among the four warmest years on record. This statistics-based product is not yet designed to explicitly take El Niño or La Niña events into account, so with a global-atmosphere-warming El Niño event about to unfold, the odds may be higher still.
Global land areas had their seventh-warmest April on record in 2026, while global oceans had their second-warmest April, falling just 0.05 degrees Celsius (0.09°F) short of the record set in April 2024, NOAA said. Several continents experienced a top-10 warmest April on record, including Asia (seventh-warmest), Antarctica (eighth-warmest), and Oceania (tied for ninth-warmest). Although North America, South America, Europe, and the Arctic also experienced above-average April temperatures, they did not rank among their top 10.
