Global August average temperature breaks record again; UN blasts fossil fuel addiction driving spiraling climate costs

According to a Deutsche Welle report, data released on Thursday by the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service showed that this August's global average temperature reached 16.96 degrees Celsius, becoming the highest monthly average since the agency began keeping records in 1940, breaking the record set just three years ago in July 2023.

Samantha Burgess, a scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which oversees the Copernicus project, told AFP: "At least in the past 100,000 years, humanity may not have experienced temperatures like today's." The statement places the current heat wave on a geological time scale.

Western Europe experienced its hottest summer on record

The report noted that Western Europe experienced its hottest summer on record this year, suffering successive rounds of heat waves, droughts and wildfires. Estimates from the European mortality monitoring platform EuroMOMO show that in just one month, from mid-July to mid-August, more than 32,000 excess deaths in Europe were attributed to heat-related causes.

Meanwhile, global ocean temperatures matched their highest level on record, extending a trend of record-breaking ocean heat for three consecutive months. The hot seawater is severely impacting marine life, coral reefs and coastal communities. Combined with what is forecast to be the strongest modern El Niño, bringing unusually warm Pacific waters, the likelihood of extreme weather events ranging from floods and droughts to wildfires has been pushed even higher globally.

UN: "The spiraling cost of fossil fuel addiction"

Copernicus data shows that long-term warming now averages around 1.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, approaching the 1.5-degree upper limit set by the Paris Agreement. Last week, the UN publicly stated that the 1.5-degree temperature target is no longer achievable and urged countries to accelerate greenhouse gas emission cuts.

Simon Stiell, the UN's climate chief, responding to the Copernicus report, said bluntly: "The evidence is clear: this is the spiraling cost of humanity's fossil fuel addiction, and the worsening global climate crisis it is driving." He warned that as long as humanity continues to burn coal, oil and natural gas, extreme heat will keep setting new records.

Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, told the Associated Press: "It's time to stop being surprised that our planet keeps warming — this is exactly what scientists predicted decades ago." He added: "The real question is not whether we will keep breaking heat records (we will), but whether we will actually take action, or just watch the climate train run over us."

The gap between pledges and trajectory

The release of the Copernicus report stands in sharp contrast to the UN's own admission last week: nearly a decade after the signing of the Paris Agreement, the 1.5-degree temperature target has been declared "no longer achievable," while global temperatures continue to accelerate toward that ceiling. Stiell pointed the finger squarely at "fossil fuel addiction," criticizing not just the physical limits of the climate system but the political choices of major economies that continue to expand fossil fuel production even as they sign climate accords. As temperature records are broken at a pace people can physically feel, the gap between climate pledges and emission trajectories is no longer an abstract debate — it is the tens of thousands of excess deaths on the European continent.