The heat assault

“This might be the coldest summer of your life.” Greenpeace ran that line in a recent social media campaign on the global heatwave. Alarming as it sounds, it is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Each year, the mercury climbs higher during summer months and 2026 is no exception. From the scorched plains of South Asia to the furnace-like cities of the Middle East, a punishing heatwave has gripped a vast arc of the globe, pushing the mercury past 50C in multiple countries. In Pakistan, Sukkur and Dadu in Sindh recorded highs of 50C, while the meteorological department warned that parts of the province could reach 51C. Across the border in India, the desert city of Churu in Rajasthan hit 50.3C on June 14—one of the highest readings ever recorded in the country. In Afghanistan, southern regions witnessed prolonged extreme heat where temperatures commonly reach 36-43C. Together, these nations formed the epicenter of a South Asian heatwave that arrived earlier than the typical May-June season and is expected to continue through summer. The heat in the Middle East was equally unforgiving and temperatures soared across the region. Forecasters cautioned that South Iraq, Kuwait, and parts of Saudi Arabia would witness temperatures approach or exceed 50C, with Baghdad and Kuwait City among the hardest hit. The ArabiaWeather center confirmed that temperatures in Iraq and Kuwait had already ‘approached and exceeded the 50C barrier’ during the early days of summer. This assault of extreme heat was felt across multiple nations and by late June, the same brutal pattern had taken hold thousands of miles to the west. France recorded its hottest day on record on June 24—beating the record set just the previous day—with an average national temperature of 30C, above previous records set in July 2019 and August 2003, according to the local meteorological service. Temperatures soared to 43.8C in the town of Pulluau in western France. Overnight temperatures also set a new national record. A top-level red alert was issued for a record 58 departments—most of the country—as authorities warned of a high risk of forest fires amid a worsening drought. Similarly, Spain recorded its hottest June days on record on June 23 and 24, with temperatures well above 40C in a number of locations, according to the Agencia Estatal de Meteorología, AEMET. The UK’s Met Office, which issued a red extreme heat warning for June 24-25, reported a new provisional daily maximum air temperature record for June, with 36.1C recorded at Gosport in southern England on June 24. This comes just weeks after May also saw UK daily temperature records broken. Germany’s national weather service, the Deutscher Wetterdienst, issued similar red alerts, including for the capital Bonn and the cities of Frankfurt and Cologne. The Swiss cities of Geneva, Basel, and Zurich were also placed under heat alert. And this is just the beginning of a sizzling summer in Europe. According to one of the World Meteorological Organization’s regional European climate monitoring centres, led by the Deutscher Wetterdienst, the heatwave will spread over large parts of Western, Central, and Southern Europe within the next two weeks. Current forecasts suggest the focus of the heat is even likely to shift towards the Balkans. The Climate Watch issued by WMO’s regional climate monitoring centre at the German Meteorological Serviceforecasts that temperatures will be between 3C and 10C above the weekly average for this time of year. Absolute daily maximum temperatures above 35C and daily minima above 20C—what meteorologists call ‘tropical nights’—are expected in many parts over several days, with temperatures towards the southwest locally above 40C. There will be an increased risk of heat stress and forest fires, but also locally strong thunderstorms with hail, it warned. From the 50C furnace of South Asia and the Middle East to the record-smashing heat of Western Europe, June 2026 has written a new chapter in the story of our warming planet, one that appears to be sparing no region, no nation, and no individual. The second-hottest month According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the world just experienced its second-hottest May since records began in 1940, with average global surface air temperatures reaching 15.81C—0.55C above the 1991-2020 average. The month ranked second only to May 2024 and was approximately 1.42C warmer than the estimated pre-industrial average for 1850-1900. The numbers, while alarming, tell only part of the story. Across Western Europe, an unusually early and intense heatwave shattered national temperature records for May, while the tropical Pacific Ocean recorded exceptionally high sea surface temperatures as the region continued its transition toward El Nino conditions. The World Meteorological Organization now estimates an 80% chance that El Nino will develop between June and August 2026. “May 2026 was the second warmest May on record globally, extending the exceptional global warmth, with near-record temperatures in both the atmosphere and the ocean,” said Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, in a Copernicus Climate Change Service press release. “In Europe, an unusually early and intense heatwave demonstrates how quickly climate extremes are becoming the new normal rather than the exception,” Burgess cautioned. Changing patterns Perhaps the most remarkable feature of May 2026 was the dramatic shift in European weather patterns. The month began with cooler-than-average conditions across much of western and central Europe, but around May 20, a rapid transition brought an intense heatwave that caught populations and ecosystems off guard. The sudden change likely increased health impacts, leaving little time for people to acclimatize to much higher temperatures, according to Copernicus scientists. The heatwave, driven by a persistent high-pressure system or ‘heat dome’ that trapped hot air from North Africa, pushed temperatures 10C to 15C above climatological averages for late May in some regions. ‘Feels-like’ temperatures, which account for humidity and other factors, reached 35C to 40C across large parts of Western Europe, corresponding to ‘strong’ and ‘very strong’ heat stress conditions. Spain reported 101 heat-related deaths in May, the highest figure for the month since monitoring began in 2015, while the UK attributed at least more than a dozen fatalities to water-related incidents during the heatwave. France recorded 40 deaths attributed to heat, including drowning incidents. Ocean temperatures are rising The heat was not confined to land, and the oceans are getting warmer—though the trend has gone largely unnoticed and underreported. According to Copernicus data, the average sea surface temperature across the broad tropical Pacific region has reached unprecedented levels for this time of year, and this is occurring even before the forecasted El Nino event has fully developed. The phenomenon, which naturally occurs every two to seven years when weakening trade winds allow warmer waters to build up in the eastern Pacific, is expected to fuel further extreme weather globally in the coming months. The combination of warm ocean waters and the developing El Nino has raised concerns among climate scientists. The phenomenon typically results in higher global temperatures and disrupted rainfall patterns, meaning drought in some regions and heavy rains in others. The WMO has indicated that climate models point to a high likelihood of El Nino strengthening toward the end of 2026, which could influence weather patterns across many regions of the world. The driver While El Nino is a natural climate pattern, scientists emphasize that human-induced climate change remains the primary driver of the long-term warming trend. Europe, in particular, is the fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising by approximately 0.56C per decade since the mid-1990s—more than double the global average. The May heatwave in Europe, while remarkable for occurring so early in the year, is consistent with scientists’ expectations of how climate change will affect the world’s fastest-warming continent, according to Copernicus data. The early timing of the event exposed vegetation and ecosystems to extreme heat at a vulnerable point in the growing season, potentially affecting agricultural productivity and food prices. The trend is clear and five of the last ten Mays in Europe were cooler than average, but the overall warming signal remains strong and very visible. Scientists caution that as global temperatures continue to rise, extreme heat events are likely to become more frequent, more intense, and longer-lasting, posing growing challenges for public health, agriculture, and infrastructure. While Western Europe baked, parts of central and eastern Europe experienced drier-than-average conditions, and regions including Turkey, Bulgaria, and Moldova suffered widespread flooding. A glimpse of the future? For many, the events of May 2026 offer a glimpse of what lies ahead as the planet continues to warm. The month’s extremes—from the European heatwave to the record Pacific ocean temperatures—validate scientific predictions about the effects of climate change combined with natural variability like El Nino. As Burgess from the Copernicus Climate Change Service noted, the rapid transition from cooler to extreme heat in Europe underscores how quickly conditions can shift, catching communities unprepared. With the WMO predicting an 80% chance of El Nino forming in the coming months, forecasters warn that 2026 could see further temperature records fall. “The continued warming trend, combined with persistently high ocean temperatures and emerging El Nino conditions, shows growing risks of more frequent and intense climate extremes worldwide,” the Copernicus Climate Change Service stated in its May bulletin. If that warning was not enough, and there is no shortage of them, the UN weather agency has now raised another red flag. The world, according to a latest report by the UN and UK’s met office, is on course for another period of dangerous heat, with global temperatures forecast to remain at or near record levels for the next five years. The annual Global Annual-to-Decadal Update, published in May, predicts that average global temperatures between 2026 and 2030 will range between 1.3C and 1.9C above the pre-industrial average of 1850-1900. The findings show the accelerating pace of global heating and the increasing frequency of extreme heat events, with scientists warning that the window to limit long-term warming to 1.5C is ‘closing rapidly’. One of the report’s most alarming projections is that there is a 91% chance that average global temperatures will temporarily exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels during at least one year between 2026 and 2030. This benchmark was already temporarily exceeded in 2024, when the global average surface temperature reached about 1.55C above the pre-industrial baseline for the first time. The report also predicts an 86% chance that at least one year in the 2026-2030 period will surpass 2024 as the warmest year on record. According to Dr Leon Hermanson, the report’s lead author, “There is an El Nino predicted for the end of 2026, which increases the chances of the following year, 2027, being the next record-breaking year.” The 1.5C mark The UN report, which combines predictions from more than a dozen different institutes, including the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre and the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, is intended as guidance for national meteorological services and policymakers. It makes clear that while temporary exceedances of 1.5C do not represent a failure of the Paris Agreement, they are expected to occur with increasing frequency as the underlying rise in global temperature approaches these levels. Melissa Seabrook, a research scientist at the UK Met Office, explained in an interview with Reuters that as the world gets closer to that threshold, it is increasingly likely to pass it more often. The science, she cautioned, is very clear that the window to keeping the global average temperature to 1.5 degrees is closing rapidly. While the report stops short of predicting that 2026 will surpass 2024’s record, it does not rule it out. What we do know is that the baseline has shifted, and the world is running out of benchmarks that still mean anything.

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