A 2026 global heat record of some description now looks increasingly likely, according to the two main bodies that track the planet’s temperature through the year. The United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration puts the odds of 2026 ranking among the five warmest years ever recorded above 97 percent, and the chance of a top-ten finish above 99.9 percent, a near-certainty that reflects just how crowded the upper end of the historical ranking has become.
June offered an early preview of the pattern. Global surface temperature that month ran 1.09 degrees Celsius above the long-term average, the second-warmest June in NOAA’s 177-year record, and one of ten warmest Junes on record that have all occurred since 2015. The first six months of 2026 together form the third-warmest such period on record, trailing only 2024 and 2025, years that themselves rank among the dozen hottest ever measured.
Europe’s heat waves turn deadly
Regional extremes within that broader warmth proved far more dangerous than the global average suggests. Western Europe recorded its hottest June on record, with 252 weather stations across Germany setting all-time temperature marks, the largest number of record-breaking stations the country has logged during a single heat wave. Germany has now recorded more than 5,000 heat-related deaths so far this year, a toll that underscores how a fraction of a degree in the global average can translate into a lethal season on the ground in particular countries.
The Arctic offered its own warning signs. Sea ice extent in June ranked third-lowest on record, arriving straight after the region’s warmest June ever measured, a sequence consistent with the accelerated warming scientists call Arctic amplification. The World Meteorological Organization’s longer-range outlook, published in May, projects Arctic winter temperatures over the next five years running 2.8 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, more than three and a half times the anomaly expected for the planet as a whole.
Longer-range forecasts point past 1.5 degrees
Beyond Europe and the Arctic, NOAA’s data shows large warm anomalies across eastern Australia, parts of Africa, Siberia and the central and eastern tropical Pacific during June, a geographical spread that officials say makes this year’s warmth harder to attribute to any single regional weather pattern. The United States recorded a comparatively modest 18th-warmest June on record, a reminder that the global pattern does not land evenly everywhere even in a year on track for a top-five finish overall.
That WMO assessment, compiled by the UK Met Office from 13 forecasting institutes, puts the 2026-2030 global average between 1.3 and 1.9 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with a 75 percent chance the five-year mean itself exceeds the symbolic 1.5-degree threshold set under the Paris Agreement. There is a 91 percent chance at least one individual year in that window temporarily exceeds 1.5 degrees, and an 86 percent chance some year beats 2024’s current record outright, though the report rates the odds of any single year crossing 2 degrees at under 1 percent.
Lead author Leon Hermanson expects a developing El Niño, forecast to strengthen toward the end of 2026, to push the following year higher still. “There is an El Niño predicted for the end of 2026,” he said, a pattern that historically raises global average temperatures the year after it peaks, which would place 2027 rather than 2026 itself as the more likely candidate for an outright record. Either way, meteorologists say the underlying trend leaves little room for a cooler surprise: the last twelve years have already filled almost every slot on the list of the warmest years ever measured, and the 2026 global heat record now forming looks set to extend that run rather than interrupt it.
