Could 2026 become the hottest year as El Nino and warming intensify

Washington,UPDATED: Aug 4, 2026 23:04 IST

Wildfires across North America and Europe, deadly heat waves over major cities, and record-hot oceans have added to concern that 2026 could end up as the hottest year ever recorded. Scientists said the year is not there yet, but a combination of human-driven global warming and a strengthening El Nino is raising the chances that it could overtake 2024 by the end of the year, or come very close.

Climate experts also said that even if 2026 sets a record, it may not hold for long. While scientists differ on whether this year will finish at the top, many agree that 2027 is very likely to be hotter than any year in modern records, possibly by a wide margin.

So far, climate statistics show 2026 is only the third-hottest year, behind 2024 and 2025. But Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said the outlook is changing quickly. He calculated there is a 35 per cent chance that 2026 will pass 2024 as the hottest year on record, up from just 7 per cent in March. Referring to the lack of wider attention to climate change in recent years, Hausfather said, "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." He added: "It's going to keep getting worse."

Former top NASA climate scientist James Hansen said he expects 2026 to edge past 2024 by the end of the year. He pointed to ocean temperatures, saying the world's daily sea surface temperature matched 2024 from May and has been at record levels on most days since June. Because oceans cover more than 70 per cent of the planet, Hansen said there is usually a lag of about six weeks before that heat is fully reflected in global average temperatures. Europe's Copernicus climate service said about 82 per cent of the world's ocean surface has been affected by marine heat waves this year.

About a month ago, the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had forecast a 66 per cent chance that 2026 would be the fourth hottest year, and only a 0.1 per cent chance that it would finish as the hottest. But NOAA monitoring chief Russell Vose said those odds are expected to rise when the agency completes its analysis for July.

Scientists said one major reason for the shift is the increasingly strong forecast for El Nino. El Nino is a natural and temporary warming in parts of the equatorial Pacific that raises the planet's average temperature and affects weather extremes around the world. Most forecasts suggest this El Nino could become the strongest on record. Climate Central scientist Zachary Labe said El Nino events always release stored heat from the oceans, but because greenhouse gases have trapped more heat and around 90 per cent of it has gone into the seas, there is now more heat to be released. He said the amount of heat in the world's oceans, a sign of human-caused climate change, keeps reaching new highs.

At the same time, scientists said this summer's fires, heat and extreme weather cannot yet be blamed on El Nino because its effects usually take a few more months to become clear. They said the events seen in 2026 match long-standing warnings about the impact of burning coal, oil and gas. Labe said, "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." Hansen said that warming is accelerating, partly because traditional industrial pollution such as soot and smog, which had masked some warming by cooling the planet, is falling. He also said the climate may be responding more strongly to greenhouse gases than scientists had expected.

Scientists said this summer's heat waves have been especially severe in places not used to such extreme temperatures, unlike in the tropics, and have been particularly noticeable at night. Samantha Burgess of Copernicus said hotter nights make it harder for people to sleep, affecting health and productivity. She pointed to Europe, which saw an "exceptional" heat wave in May, another in June, two in July, and another continuing 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. She added, "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 the current conditions are exactly what researchers have been warning about for years. "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." Overall, scientists said 2026 may yet become the hottest year on record, with the build-up of warming in the oceans and the expected impact of El Nino likely to push global temperatures even higher.

With PTI Inputs

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