Climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf took this vacation photo from Lacanau beach in France on July 24, showing a dense plume of smoke from a wildfire burning near Bordeaux. (Used with permission from Stefan Rahmstorf)
July 2026 tied with July 2024 as the planet’s hottest July since modern record-keeping began in 1850, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, reported August 11. NASA rated July 2026 as the hottest July on record, while the European Copernicus Climate Change Service rated it the second-hottest. Climatologically, July is the hottest month of the year, so July 2026 and 2024 are “more likely than not the hottest months on record for the globe since 1850,” NOAA said. The global average temperature for January-July 2026 was the third-highest on record.
Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for July 2026, tied with July 2024 as the world’s hottest month since record-keeping began in 1850. Record-high July temperatures were widespread, spanning western Europe, the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, Central America, and regions across North and South America, Africa, Asia, the Arctic and parts of every major ocean basin. Record-cold July temperatures were observed over only a very small fraction of Antarctica. (Image credit: NOAA/NCEI)
