By the end of the year, 2026 could eke out the crown for the hottest year on record, eclipsing 2024.
Wildfires are burning in North America and Europe. Deadly heat waves have parked over cities and the world’s oceans are the hottest ever recorded for this time of year. A strengthening El Nino is forecast to be off-the-charts, spiking global temperatures and warping weather all over.
While it may seem like the planet is baking through a record-shattering summer, it’s not quite in record territory. Yet.
So far this is only the third-hottest year, behind 2024 and 2025, climate statistics show. But give 2026 time. Because of a one-two punch of accelerated human-caused global warming and a supersized El Nino, there’s an increasing chance that by the end of the year, 2026 could eke out the crown for the hottest year on record, eclipsing 2024 – or at least come close, scientists said.
Even if this year sets the record, it won’t last long. Although scientists disagree on whether 2026 will be the hottest year on record, they agree on it being a near lock that 2027 will beat out any modern year for heat, maybe by a great deal.
A family of coots sit on a log floating in algae in a canal, triggered by hot weather, amid drought conditions in London. Picture credit: AP
With wars around the globe in the last few years people didn’t pay much attention to climate change “because the world was on fire in different ways. The world is now on fire again with climate change in a way that’s increasingly difficult to ignore,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth. “It’s going to keep getting worse.”
Hausfather calculated there’s a 35% chance that 2026 will pass 2024 as the hottest year on record. But Hausfather keeps increasing those odds nearly every month – up from only 7% in March.
Former top NASA climate scientist James Hansen, often called the godfather of climate science for 40 years of accurate long-term warnings, predicted that 2026 will edge out 2024 at the end of the year.
The world’s daily sea surface temperature tied 2024 starting in May and since June it’s been record hot nearly every day. With oceans more than 70% of the globe’s surface, there’s generally a month-and-a-half lag between heat showing up in oceans and then being reflected in the global average temperature, Hansen said. So it’s about time that the entire globe starts shattering records, he said. About 82% of the world’s ocean surface is overheated with marine heat waves this year, according to Europe’s Copernicus climate service.
About a month ago the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast that there was a 66% chance that 2026 would be the fourth hottest and only a 0.1% chance it would be No.1 for warmth by year’s end. NOAA monitoring chief Russell Vose said those odds will be rising when NOAA finishes its analysis from July.
Hausfather said what’s changing outlooks is the increasingly strong forecasts for a “mind-numbing” record-setting El Nino.
A usually submerged patch of land rises from the surface of the Danube River due to low levels of the water following an extended period of drought in Corabia, Romania. Picture credit: AP
El Nino is a natural temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific that heats up the globe’s average temperature and warps weather extremes across the planet. Most forecasts have El Nino becoming the strongest in history. El Ninos always release pent-up heat in the ocean, but because of greenhouse gases trapping heat and 90% of it going into the world’s seas, there’s more heat to release, said Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, a science and communications nonprofit.
The amount of heat in the world’s oceans – a marker of human-caused climate change – keeps setting new record highs, Labe said.
Climate scientists said what we’ve seen this summer can’t be blamed on El Nino because its impacts really don’t kick in for a few more months. The fires, heat and extremes that have dominated the summer of 2026 are what scientists have long been warning about from the burning of coal, oil and gas.
“The driver of the record warmth is climate change in the background. And it’s a much larger – much, much larger – contribution than El Nino, which is just a tenth to two-tenths of a degree on top of that long-term trend,” Labe said.
That warming is accelerating, Hansen said.
That’s because traditional industrial pollution that creates soot and smog – which cool the planet and mask greenhouse gas-triggered warming – is decreasing, Hansen said. Also, it looks as if the climate might be reacting to greenhouse gases stronger than scientists anticipated, he said.
This summer’s heat waves have hit hard in places where people aren’t used to triple-digit heat, unlike in the tropics, climate scientists said. And they’ve been especially noticeable at night, making it hard for people to sleep, which impairs their health and their ability to be productive at work, said Samantha Burgess, global strategic lead at Copernicus climate service.
She pointed to Europe, where there was an “exceptional” heat wave in May, another in June, two in July and another one going on now in France and Spain.
“European heat waves are not in isolation. So there’s also been shocking heat waves in North America. There’s been shockingly hot conditions in South America as well. There’s been devastating heat waves in India,” Burgess said.
“There’s always heat waves somewhere in the world sometime, but what is very unusual for Europe for this particular year is the frequency and extent of the heat waves.”
Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said this is what scientists have long been warning about.
“These are vivid pictures of not just the future, which is what we used to say, but on the whole of what climate change is doing. There’s no question that climate change has increased the risk of wildfires. There’s no question that the climate change increased the probability of really hot, nasty, even unprecedented summers around the world.”
