El Niño could make 2026 hottest year on record
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Wildfires are burning in North America and Europe. Deadly heat waves have parked over cities and the world's oceans are the hottest ever recorded for this time of year. A strengthening El Nino is forecast to be off-the-charts, spiking global temperatures and warping weather all over.
While it may seem like the planet is baking through a record-shattering summer from hell, it's not quite in record territory. Yet.
So far this is only the third-hottest year, behind 2024 and 2025, climate statistics show. But give 2026 time. Because of a one-two punch of accelerated human-caused global warming and a supersized El Nino, there's an increasing chance that by the end of the year, 2026 could eke out the crown for the hottest year on record, eclipsing 2024 -- or at least come close, scientists said.
Even if this year sets the record, it won't last long. Although scientists disagree on whether 2026 will be the hottest year on record, they agree on it being a near lock that 2027 will beat out any modern year for heat, maybe by a great deal.
With wars around the globe in the last few years people didn't pay much attention to climate change "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," said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth. "It's going to keep getting worse.”
Increasing odds for a record hot year
Hausfather calculated there's a 35% chance that 2026 will pass 2024 as the hottest year on record. But Hausfather keeps increasing those odds nearly every month -- up from only 7% in March.
Former top NASA climate scientist James Hansen, often called the godfather of climate science for 40 years of accurate long-term warnings, predicted that 2026 will edge out 2024 at the end of the year.
The world's daily sea surface temperature tied 2024 starting in May and since June it's been record hot nearly every day. With oceans more than 70% of the globe's surface, there's generally a month-and-a-half lag between heat showing up in oceans and then being reflected in the global average temperature, Hansen said. So it's about time that the entire globe starts shattering records, he said. About 82% of the world's ocean surface is overheated with marine heat waves this year, according to Europe's Copernicus climate service.
About a month ago the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast that there was a 66% chance that 2026 would be the fourth hottest and only a 0.1% chance it would be No.1 for warmth by year's end. NOAA monitoring chief Russell Vose said those odds will be rising when NOAA finishes its analysis from July.
Hausfather said what's changing outlooks is the increasingly strong forecasts for a "mind-numbing" record-setting El Nino.
El Nino is a natural temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific that heats up the globe's average temperature and warps weather extremes across the planet. Most forecasts have El Nino becoming the strongest in history. El Ninos always release pent-up heat in the ocean, but because of greenhouse gases trapping heat and 90% of it going into the world's seas, there's more heat to release, said Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, a science and communications nonprofit.
The amount of heat in the world's oceans -- a marker of human-caused climate change -- keeps setting new record highs, Labe said.