Sea surface temperatures around the world have reached the highest level on record, owing in part to the El Nino effect, the EU’s climate change agency Copernicus has found.
During the same month, prolonged hot and dry conditions in western Europe caused the intensification of extreme wildfires, which have so far this summer burnt more than 500,000 hectares in the EU – the worst year on record.
The average temperature for June–July in western Europe was the highest on record, at 21.62°C, or 2.79°C above average – surpassing the previous record from 2022 and reflecting the exceptional persistence of heat since the beginning of summer.
Exceptionally low rainfall and soil moisture were recorded in France, Spain, parts of Germany and the UK.
“July 2026 was the third consecutive month of exceptional heat in western Europe, bringing the combined temperature for June and July to a record for the region,” Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for medium-range weather forecasts, said.
“Persistent high-pressure systems trapped heat over western Europe, the extreme temperatures also amplified widespread drought.”
Air quality
Laurence Rouil, director of the Copernicus atmosphere monitoring services at the European Centre for medium-range weather forecasts, said that large fires were extending northwards.
“Larger fires produce more smoke and inject it higher into the atmosphere, meaning it can travel further and impact air quality not only locally, but across the wider region,” Ms Rouil said. “Countries that experience relatively few wildfires may be increasingly impacted by long range transport of smoke, even if they are thousands of kilometres away.”
The heat caused lower-than-average flows in Europe's large rivers – the Seine, Rhine and Danube – disrupting water supply and energy production. In Hungary, citizens were asked to cut back on their electricity consumption due to low water levels in the Danube, affecting the Paks nuclear plant.
Conversely, some areas of Europe experienced wetter than average conditions, including Baltic States, Turkey, Greece, eastern Ukraine and western Russia. This caused localised flooding. Some of these areas have also witnessed wildfires – thousands of hectares of farmland near a popular holiday retreat north-west of Athens were consumed last week.
El Nino, a periodic warming of ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific, could push an additional nearly 49 million people into acute food insecurity across some of the world's most vulnerable regions by the end of next year, the World Food Programme said earlier this week.
In July, average sea surface temperatures reached 20.97°C, surpassing the previous July record of 20.89°C, set in 2023. They will remain exceptionally high across a large portion of the tropical Pacific, an area where El Nino conditions are expected to strengthen in the coming months.
Sea temperatures were also exceptionally high in July along the Atlantic coast and the western Mediterranean, associated with widespread strong or severe marine heatwaves. They have affected coastal communities and ecosystems.
