The sea was warmer last month than in any July the record holds. In its bulletin published on 10 August, the Copernicus Climate Change Service put the average surface temperature of the extrapolar ocean — the broad band between 60°S and 60°N — at 20.96°C for July 2026, above the 20.89°C set in July 2023. On 31 July the daily figure reached 21.05°C, within four hundredths of a degree of the all-time high of 21.09°C recorded in March 2024.
Above the water, the picture was marginally cooler. The global average surface air temperature for the month was 16.90°C — 0.67°C above the 1991–2020 average and 1.47°C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial baseline. That makes July 2026 the joint-second-warmest July measured, tied with July 2024 and a little below July 2023 at 16.95°C. Because July is ordinarily the warmest month of the year, it also stands as the joint-second-warmest month ever recorded.
The ocean figure is the one that carries furthest. Water releases heat far more slowly than air, so a record in the sea surface is a slower and more stubborn signal than a hot fortnight on land — it shapes the moisture available to storms and the seasons that follow. On land, the strain showed most clearly in western Europe, where June and July together averaged 21.62°C, some 2.79°C above the 1991–2020 norm and the highest for the region in the record. Copernicus reports surface soil moisture there below even that of 2022, with exceptionally low flows on the Seine, the Rhine and the Danube. Arctic sea ice extent ranked sixth lowest for a July, Antarctic fifth lowest.
“July 2026 was the third consecutive month of exceptional heat in western Europe, bringing the combined temperature for June and July to a new record for the region,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at ECMWF. Records of this kind arrive quietly, in a monthly table rather than a siren. What they describe is not a single event but a run — and a run is read by its length rather than its loudest month.