The Record Books: What 2026 Tells Us About a Changing Climate
THE CLIMATE EVIDENCE SERIES · PART 1
The Record Books: What 2026 Tells Us About a Changing Climate
Earth’s land, oceans and clouds in NASA’s Blue Marble satellite composite. Visualization: 2002. Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Reto Stöckli and Robert Simmon.
Whenever you were in an attic in August, there was no need for a federal agency to let you know that it was hot; they did tell us, and the figures are worth examining.
August 2026 was the hottest August ever recorded on the planet, and the period from June through August was the warmest summer ever recorded worldwide. In the lower 48 states, we had the hottest summer ever since records began being kept.
They are not forecasts or the results of computer models; rather, they are thermometer readings arranged next to more than a century of other thermometer readings.
The global numbers
The National Centers for Environmental Information of NOAA recorded August 2026 as being 1.32°C (2.38°F) higher than the 20th-century average, making it the warmest August in the record extending back to 1850 and exceeding the previous record, which had been a tie between 2023 and 2024, by 0.08°C.
It may not sound like a great deal when you realize that we're dealing with the average temperature of a whole planet. So much energy is required just to make that figure move.
From June to August the temperature was 1.21°C (2.18°F) higher than average, making it the warmest period in the NOAA record spanning 177 years. Ocean temperatures also reached a record high. This is more significant than it may appear since the oceans absorb most of the extra heat that we are putting into the system; they act as the slow and reliable account keeper in all this.
All of the ten warmest Augusts on record have occurred since 2016. NOAA states that 2026 is very likely to end up among the five warmest years ever recorded, the odds pointing to it securing second place.
Don't take one agency's word for it
NOAA and NASA carry out their own temperature analyses by using different methods, while Europe's Copernicus service carries out a third. All three of them designated August 2026 as a record month for the region. The fact that separate teams employing different methods all arrive at the same conclusion is not evidence of an error in someone's spreadsheet.
What it looked like here at home
NOAA's U.S. report for August read like a list of broken records:
- The average temperature in the contiguous United States for the summer was 74.4°F, which is 3.0°F higher than the 20th-century average and also 0.4°F above the previous records established in 1936 and 2021.
- August had an average temperature of 75.6°F, which was 3.5°F above the average and the warmest August on record since August measurements began in 1895.
- National average daytime temperatures in August reached 88.6°F, setting a record.
- From January through August was the hottest period ever recorded in the 132-year U.S. record.
- California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado each logged their warmest August ever.
What strikes me is the fact that nights aren't cooling down. Overnight temperatures are breaking records in most of the West. That's something that people tend to underestimate. If the temperature doesn't drop at night then the house doesn't either. The air conditioning is never able to catch up with it, and those people who don't have air conditioning get no relief whatsoever.
By September 1, drought had covered around 59.1 per cent of the contiguous United States, representing an increase of more than ten points within a single month. At the same time, Indiana and Ohio experienced their wettest August ever. This is not a contradiction since a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and as a result you get more of both: longer periods of dry weather and heavier downpours.
How can we be sure that it's us?
This aspect of physics is nothing new; carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide hold back the amount of heat that would otherwise escape into space. Scientists have known this since the 1800s. The difference now is the quantity of these gases that we have released into the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels, clearing land, agricultural practices and industrial activities.
The sixth assessment report of the IPCC, which was based on thousands of studies, stated that human influence has clearly led to warming of the atmosphere, the ocean and the land; it also discovered that heatwaves have become both more frequent and more intense over most of the land areas since the 1950s, human-caused warming being the primary cause.
That doesn't mean every hot day is climate change. Weather still does weather things. One cold snap doesn't disprove the trend, and one heatwave doesn't prove it. The signal is in the long-term averages, and the long-term averages keep heading the same direction.
What about El Niño?
Before somebody says it in the comments: yes, El Niño was part of this. The World Meteorological Organization named it as one of the drivers of August's heat, and it's been warming the tropical Pacific all year.
But El Niño isn't new. It's been cycling for thousands of years. What's new is the floor it's standing on.
Here's how I'd explain it to a homeowner. El Niño is the hot afternoon. The rising baseline is the attic insulation somebody quietly pulled out. Hot afternoons always happened. They didn't always cook the upstairs bedroom.
Where emissions stand
U.S. gross greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 were 5.1% below 1990 levels, according to the latest national Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Analysis. That's real progress. But emissions also ticked up slightly from 2023 to 2024, by about 0.04%. Flat is not the same as falling.
Why this lands on our desk
This is where it stops being a news story and starts being a job description.
Record heat shows up in buildings first. Cooling loads climb. Oversized, undersized, or badly installed equipment runs nonstop and still can't keep up. Leaky ducts in a baking attic dump expensive cold air where nobody lives. Crews working in attics and crawlspaces face real heat-illness risk. And homeowners usually notice all of it on the utility bill before they notice it anywhere else.
Every one of those problems is something a trained energy auditor, HERS Rater, or HVAC pro can measure and fix. Blower door testing. Duct leakage testing. Right-sized equipment. Air sealing, insulation, and ventilation done properly. None of it is glamorous. All of it works, and it works today.
What comes next
The record books show climate change is something we're measuring now, not just projecting for later. In the next parts of The Climate Evidence Series, we'll get into how it reaches our homes, energy bills, indoor air, health, and communities, and what the people doing building performance work can do about it.
If you're already doing this work, thank you. If you're thinking about getting into it, the demand isn't going anywhere, and neither is the heat. Here's more on how energy efficiency certification builds credibility and opens doors for contractors.
Sources
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