BRUSSELS, Nov 6 (Reuters) – The world experienced its warmest October on record, and 2026 is all but certain to become the second calendar year after 2024 to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the EU’s Copernicus climate service said on Friday.
“October 2026 was the warmest October on record globally, with an average global surface air temperature 1.75°C above the pre-industrial level,” Copernicus said in a statement.
• The October data mark a third straight month above the 1.5 C threshold, Copernicus said, as El Niño conditions intensify in the tropical Pacific and the four-year average from 2023 to 2026 is also expected to break that mark
• Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to try to limit global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, though the target refers to a long-term average, so a single year above the mark does not mean it has been breached
• Scientists say warming beyond 1.5 C sharply increases the risk of severe heatwaves, droughts, floods and other climate impacts
• Copernicus also said that 2026 is most likely to be the second-warmest year on record, with about a 20% chance of tying or exceeding 2024, currently the warmest year on record
• In October, the average sea surface temperature outside the polar regions reached 20.95 C, the highest on record for the month, surpassing the previous October record set in 2023
• In the tropical Pacific, where El Niño conditions continued to intensify, the monthly sea surface temperature anomaly in the Niño 3.4 region — the central-equatorial Pacific zone used to monitor El Niño — reached an all-time high of 3.21 C above average, exceeding the peaks recorded during previous very strong El Niño events
(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout, editing by Inti Landauro and Hugh Lawson)
