Paris (France) (AFP) – After a record October, the year 2026 will “very probably” be the 2nd hottest ever recorded in the world, after 2024, while an exceptionally powerful El Niño weather phenomenon accentuates global warming, the Copernicus observatory judged on Friday.

Published on: 06/11/2026 - 12:10

“2026 will most likely be the second hottest year on record, with about a 20% chance of matching or surpassing 2024, currently the hottest year on record,” Copernicus said in its monthly bulletin.

The data comes as nations prepare to meet on Monday in Turkey for COP31 – the United Nations climate summit – after a year marked by deadly floods in Nepal, intense heat waves in Europe and major forest fires in Indonesia.

According to Copernicus, it is "now almost certain" that global temperatures will exceed the threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in 2026, the most ambitious objective set during the Paris agreement in 2015 to try to avoid the disastrous consequences (heatwaves, floods, droughts, etc.) linked to human-caused global warming.

The four-year average, from 2023 to 2026, should also cross the 1.5°C mark, it is added.

This “underlines the extent to which this period of global warming has taken hold,” notes Samantha Burgess, one of the managers of Copernicus, in a press release.

However, crossing the 1.5°C limit over a few years does not mean that the most ambitious objective of the Paris agreement is over, this threshold must be crossed over a much longer period to be considered officially exceeded.

However, scientists agree that this overshoot, at least temporary, appears inevitable and could even be effective by 2030.

Superstrong El Niño

Copernicus also indicates that October 2026 was, on a global scale, the hottest October ever recorded on the planet with an average air temperature 1.75°C higher than that of pre-industrial times.

“October continues a period of remarkable global warmth, marked by record temperatures, both globally and at the surface of the oceans,” says Ms. Burgess.

Especially since “an exceptionally powerful El Niño phenomenon adds even more heat to a climate already warmed by human activities,” she adds.

Last month, the surface temperatures of the world's oceans and seas once again reached levels not seen for this time of year.

“The average sea surface temperature outside the polar regions reached 20.95°C — a record high for an October, surpassing the previous record set in October 2023,” the bulletin said.

In the tropical Pacific, where conditions linked to the El Niño phenomenon continued to intensify, the monthly sea surface temperature anomaly in part of this area "reached a historic high of 3.21°C, surpassing the peaks recorded during previous very strong El Niño episodes", it is specified.

And this, while the peak of the cyclical climatic phenomenon has not yet been reached and could occur at the end of the year.

On October 21, the UN warned that the ongoing El Niño episode - a natural phenomenon that causes warming global temperatures and worsening extreme events across the planet - could be "unprecedented" and "literally exceed current monitoring scales".

The last El Niño episode, in 2023 and 2024, made these years the two hottest on record. And forecasters say the ongoing El Niño could help make 2027 the hottest year on record.

© 2026 AFP

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