August ties July 2023 as hottest month on record, driven by climate change and El Niño

August was the joint-hottest month ever recorded, tying with July 2023, according to the EU's climate service.

The record was driven by a combination of climate change and the rising influence of El Niño, pushing heat into the atmosphere across the Pacific.

Temperatures for the month were 1.65C above pre-industrial levels - surpassing the critical 1.5C threshold agreed by countries to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

While a single month above 1.5C does not mean it has been permanently crossed, it shows a trend towards breaching that limit.

The month also capped western Europe's warmest summer, with high temperatures pushing the season past the deadly heat of 2003.

Dr Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at Copernicus, described August as "a remarkable month in the global climate record", and its impacts had been "increasingly being felt by communities, economies and ecosystems across the world".

The combination of record air temperatures, record ocean heat and Europe's exceptional summer showed how climate change was now driving extremes across "both the atmosphere and the oceans", she said.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the record clearly showed humanity's impact on the climate.

"The evidence is irrefutable: this is the spiralling price of humanity's fossil fuel addiction, and the global climate crisis it is fuelling," he said.

On top of the ongoing impact of the use of fossil fuels, the rise of a powerful El Niño is making matters worse, the researchers have said.

El Niño is a natural climate pattern in which a band of the eastern Pacific turns unusually warm, releasing vast amounts of stored ocean heat into the atmosphere and nudging global temperatures upwards for around a year.

The one currently being experienced is still strengthening and could become one of the most powerful on record, according to the Copernicus team.

The biggest impact of this natural phenomenon on global temperatures is expected to hit over the coming year, meaning the current run of records may have further to go.