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NCEI: August 2026 was the warmest August in the global record

NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information said August 2026 global surface temperature ran 2.38°F above the 20th-century average — the warmest August in the 1850–2026 record.

NCEI’s monthly global climate feature summarizes temperature, sea ice, and tropical cyclone tallies. It is a climate monitoring release, not a local storm warning.

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The global surface temperature in August 2026 was 2.38°F (1.32°C) above the 20th-century average—the warmest August in the 1850–2026 record, eclipsing the previous tied records set in 2023 and 2024 by 0.14°F (0.08°C). It marked the 48th-consecutive August with global temperatures above the 20th-century average (the last below-average August occurred in 1978), and all 10 of the warmest Augusts on record have occurred since 2016. Global ocean temperatures set a new record high, while global land temperatures were near-record warm.

During August 2026, above-average temperatures covered most global land and ocean surfaces. Notable temperature departures of at least +3.6°F (+2.0°C) spanned Europe, Africa, Asia, Antarctica, parts of North and South America, North Pacific Ocean, and a vast area of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (consistent with ongoing El Niño conditions). Record-high August temperatures were mainly present across Greenland, Africa, and parts of Europe, Asia, North and South America, the Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Canadian Arctic oceans as well as extensive areas of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Below-average temperatures were limited to parts of the Arctic, eastern Russia and Antarctica. However, no land or ocean areas had record-cold August temperatures.

Original release: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-climate-202608

What to read next: /executive/agency/noaa and /federal.

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Source: the official public federal record official record · NOAA NCEI · Sep 2026.

This is a Notice Nearby publisher-desk Federal brief — a short in-house summary of a public federal filing. It is not official agency minutes, not a newspaper story, and not Legal Publication. It does not satisfy a statutory notice requirement.

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