January to June 2026 had a global surface temperature departure of +1.14°C, the third highest for that stretch in a 177-year record. Only 2024 and 2025 beat it, according to NOAA’s report as covered by The Weather Channel. Berkeley Earth called June the second warmest June on record.
Is 2026 going to be the hottest year ever? Nobody’s sure. Berkeley Earth’s own system gave 67% odds on second warmest, though other approaches they mention put record warmth closer to 25%. Carbon Brief’s analysis had a 19% chance of a record. The bigger bet is 2027, because global temperatures lag the ocean signal by about three months.
Super El Niño
El Niño is basically the tropical Pacific running a fever. A big patch of ocean gets warmer than it should, and that extra heat gets handed to the air above it, which bends rain and heat patterns across the world (it’s often the reason monsoons in India and Southeast Asia run late, as the Union of Concerned Scientists notes). Scientists track it in a box of ocean called Niño 3.4. NOAA declared this one in early June.
By 21 September the Niño 3.4 anomaly hit 3.11°C, per Carbon Brief. The old record was 3.02°C, set in November 2015, Science News Explores reports.
Congrats, now you know why everyone is saying “super El Niño.”
There’s a catch, though. The standard index compares today’s ocean to a 30-year average, and that average keeps creeping up as oceans warm. NOAA’s newer version (RONI) adjusts for that. By RONI, 2026 is the third strongest El Niño at any time of year, still behind 1982 and 2015, as UCS explains. It is the strongest for this point in early October, and it’s only October.The weather is already shifting because of it. California declared a state of emergency on 21 September over flood, landslide and coastal risk. The Atlantic hurricane season has been weirdly quiet while the East Pacific is having a record one. The World Food Programme is warning that tens of millions more people could end up food insecure over the next year. And a University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab study, as reported by UCS, says there could be over 451,000 excess heat deaths this year.
The ice didn’t wait
Arctic sea ice hit its yearly peak on 15 March at 14.29 million square kilometers. That’s the lowest winter peak in the 48-year satellite record, or at least tied for it, according to NASA and NSIDC. 2025 was 20,000 km² higher and the measurement error is 30,000, so NSIDC just called it even.
Zoom out and it’s 1.36 million km² under the 1981 to 2010 average (about twice the size of Texas). March ice volume was the lowest on record anyway, per the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative.
The rulebook
The EPA repealed the 2009 endangerment finding on 12 February. That’s the official conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger public health, and most US climate rules since 2010 were built on it, as Davis Polk lays out. EPA argued the finding lacked clear congressional authorization and stretched cause and effect. The repeal took effect on 20 April.
Twenty-five attorneys general plus cities sued in the D.C. Circuit on 19 March. Law firms expect this to end up at the Supreme Court.
Solar
In 2025, renewables produced 33.8% of global electricity and coal 33.0%, the first time in the modern power system that renewables came out ahead, per Ember’s Global Electricity Review. In the US, solar beat coal for the first full month on record in May 2026, at 12.8% against 12.2%, Quartz reports from Ember data.
The AI bill
If you’ve been reading this site, you saw this one coming. The IEA’s April report found data centre electricity demand rose 17% in 2025 while global demand grew 3%. AI-focused data centres rose 50%. The IEA expects data centre demand to double by 2030 and the AI part to triple, and big tech spending is projected to jump another 75% this year. Each AI task is getting more efficient, but total use keeps climbing anyway.
Antalya
COP31 runs from 9 to 20 November in Türkiye. Türkiye hosts and Australia leads the negotiations, and it’s being billed as an implementation COP, meaning the question is whether earlier promises turn into action.
That’s it for today, stick around for more climate news !
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