Halfway through 2026, the year is shaping up to be one of the most climatologically eventful on record — not because any single event is unprecedented, but because heat, ocean warmth, and extreme weather have been arriving simultaneously across nearly every continent. Below is a roundup of where the science and the headlines stand as of late July.

A Second Straight Near-Record Year, With a Wildcard Building

The first quarter of 2026 came in as the fourth-warmest start to any year in the instrumental record, and forecasters at Carbon Brief now put 2026 on track to finish as the second-warmest year on record, behind only 2024 — though they give it roughly a one-in-five chance of taking the top spot outright. The best estimate for the year’s global temperature anomaly sits around 1.47°C above pre-industrial levels, within a plausible range of 1.37°C to 1.58°C.

The wildcard is El Niño. A strong — potentially “super” — El Niño is expected to develop by early autumn, with climate models projecting roughly 2.2°C of warming in the key equatorial Pacific region (Niño3.4) by September. Because El Niño events tend to add extra warmth to global averages the following year, the World Meteorological Organization’s five-year outlook puts the odds at 86% that at least one year between 2026 and 2030 will beat 2024’s record, with 2027 emerging as the most likely candidate. The WMO also says there’s now a 91% chance the global average temporarily exceeds the 1.5°C threshold at some point in that window, while breaching 2°C remains very unlikely for now.

Oceans Running Hotter Than Ever Measured

Global sea surface temperatures hit their highest level ever recorded for the date on June 21, 2026, reaching 20.86°C according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service — surpassing the previous records set in 2023 and 2024 — and readings have stayed elevated most days since. Copernicus’ director described the pattern as a possible sign of “the beginning of a new phase, leading, once more, to uncharted territory.” Arctic sea ice tracked a similarly worrying path, peaking at 14.29 million square kilometers in mid-March, tying 2025’s record low, while Antarctic sea ice held near the low end of its historical range.

A Deadly Stretch of Heat on Both Sides of the Atlantic

Early July brought what attribution scientists at World Weather Attribution called “virtually impossible” heat to the eastern United States: a heat dome pushed temperatures past 100°F across more than 20 states, triggered heat alerts for over 140 million people, and has been linked to at least 25 deaths so far. Europe baked at the same time, with France, Spain, and Portugal all topping 40°C alongside destructive wildfires. France’s own preliminary estimate of heat-related deaths from the late-June event roughly doubled to over 1,000, while Carbon Brief’s independent analysis put the toll closer to 2,700 — and researchers concluded the heatwave would have been virtually impossible even fifty years ago.

That heat followed a turbulent start to the year that the WMO says made January 2026 the fifth-warmest on record globally, despite — or alongside — serious cold in other places. Australia saw back-to-back heatwaves in January, with Ceduna, South Australia hitting a record 49.5°C; scientists attributed roughly 1.6°C of that heat directly to climate change. Wildfires tore through Chile’s Biobío and Ñuble regions, killing at least 21 people and destroying hundreds of structures, while drought and wind fed catastrophic fires in Argentine Patagonia. At the same time, a major winter storm brought what U.S. forecasters warned could be “the longest duration of cold in several decades” to North America, Kamchatka logged some of its snowiest weeks since the 1970s, and Aomori, Japan, saw its heaviest snowfall in 40 years.

Flooding rounded out the pattern: Mozambique’s worst flooding in years affected roughly 650,000 people, a World Weather Attribution study tied the intensity of such downpours to a 40% increase since preindustrial times, South Africa’s floods killed at least 30 people and prompted a national disaster declaration, a landslide in West Java killed more than 50, and record rainfall triggered deadly flooding and landslides across New Zealand’s upper North Island. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo pointed to the throughline: countries with strong early-warning systems see disaster deaths run six times lower than those without.

The Ozone Layer’s Unlikely Climate Lesson

Amid the heat news, researchers revisited an older climate story with a new twist: atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon found that the Antarctic ozone hole could theoretically have been detected as early as 1957 using modern satellite-analysis techniques, decades before it was actually discovered in the 1980s. The episode is a reminder of how the ozone story intersects with climate change — ozone depletion itself has little direct warming effect at the surface, but the CFCs that caused it are potent greenhouse gases in their own right, meaning the Montreal Protocol’s phase-out has quietly been one of the more effective climate interventions of the past several decades.

The Policy Calendar: COP31 Takes Shape

On the diplomatic side, this year’s UN climate conference — COP31 — will be held in Türkiye, with Australia serving as President of the negotiations and a Pacific nation hosting the traditional pre-COP meeting, a split-hosting arrangement meant to pair two climate-exposed regions. Organizers are framing it as building on COP30’s “era of implementation” theme, with priorities centered on closing gaps in energy, finance, adaptation, and resilience funding. Analysts note that the Asia-Pacific region alone is expected to deliver close to 47% of the renewable energy growth needed to meet the COP28 goal of tripling global renewable capacity by 2030 — making the region’s follow-through unusually consequential for whether that target stays realistic.

Compiled from public reporting and research by Carbon Brief, the World Meteorological Organization, Copernicus Climate Change Service, World Weather Attribution, and E3G, among others. Figures reflect the most recent published data as of late July 2026 and are subject to revision as agencies finalize their records.