Last month was the hottest June ever recorded in Western Europe, while globally it was the second-warmest June on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The average temperature in Western Europe reached 20.74 degrees Celsius, more than 3 degrees above the 1991-2020 June average, the climate monitoring service said.
Globally, the average temperature was 16.54 degrees, or 0.56 degrees above the 1991-2020 average for June. The month was also 1.39 degrees warmer than the estimated pre-industrial June average for the 1850-1900 period, Copernicus said.
A heatwave during the second half of June, which followed another period of unusually hot weather in May, broke temperature records in several Western European countries, according to Copernicus.
The succession of extreme weather events highlighted the challenges expected in the future, while dry conditions in south-western Europe fuelled wildfires, it said.
The average sea surface temperature across oceans outside the polar regions reached 20.86 degrees in June, the highest ever recorded for the month, the service said.
Samantha Burgess, Copernicus’ strategic lead for climate, said June 2026 underscored the extent of ongoing climate change.
She said the combination of record air and ocean temperatures reflected a climate system that continued to accumulate heat, resulting in increasingly intense heatwaves, persistently warm oceans and growing risks for people, ecosystems and infrastructure across Europe and beyond.
Copernicus regularly publishes data on global surface temperatures, sea ice and precipitation based on computer analyses that combine billions of observations from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations worldwide.