NOAA Confirms 2026 Was America's Hottest Summer in 132 Years of Recordkeeping

NOAA released its official summer climate report Wednesday, September 9, confirming what forecasters had flagged since July was the hottest month ever recorded: the summer of 2026 is now the hottest in 132 years of U.S. recordkeeping.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the contiguous U.S. averaged 74.4°F between June and August, beating the previous record, set in 1936 and matched again in 2021, by 0.4 degrees. According to CNN, which noted the 1936 Dust Bowl summer had stood as the benchmark for nearly a century.

August alone set the record for hottest month since NOAA started keeping data in 1895, averaging 75.6°F with daytime highs hitting 88.6°F, the warmest average high ever logged for the month, per NOAA's report.

Records everywhere, almost none the other direction

CNN's count of NOAA data found 1,541 record monthly highs were set or tied nationwide this summer, against just 87 record lows. Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado each posted their hottest summer on record. California had its fifth-driest summer ever and its driest since 2002, according to NOAA's report cited by CBS News.

Rainfall wasn't uniform. Texas and Oklahoma got less than 30% of their normal August rain, Al Jazeera reported, while Indiana and Ohio saw their wettest August on record, with central Indiana getting 11 inches of rain in a single week, August 11-17, according to NOAA figures reported by Phys.org and Channel NewsAsia.

The dry side dominates the national picture. Nearly 59% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought as of September 1, up more than 10 percentage points in a month, Al Jazeera reported. Lake Mead, the country's largest reservoir, dropped to its lowest level on record, 1.5 feet below its previous low from July 2022, per NOAA data cited by Phys.org.

El Niño is the wild card for what comes next

NOAA says there's now a better than 90% chance a strengthening El Niño becomes a very strong event this fall and winter, and a 69% chance it reaches historic intensity between October and December, exceeding anything measured since 1950. The World Meteorological Organization puts the odds near 100% that El Niño persists at least into February 2027.

"If this trajectory continues, it may be stronger than anything since our monitoring began, so literally off the charts we have used for the past four decades," WMO chief Celeste Saulo told reporters, according to Al Jazeera. NOAA's modeling suggests the pattern could help make 2027 the hottest year on record globally, and increases the odds 2026 itself ends up beating 2024 as the warmest year in U.S. history.

Climate scientists framed the record bluntly. "It is now time to stop acting surprised that our warming planet keeps getting warmer," Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M told AFP, in remarks carried by Phys.org and Channel NewsAsia. Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth said the record "should absolutely send alarm bells ringing," citing heat stress, cooling demand and strain on infrastructure.

The fair pushback: how much is El Niño, how much is trend

NOAA's report itself credits the developing El Niño, following last year's La Niña, as a real driver of this particular record. The 1936 Dust Bowl summer this year narrowly surpassed was driven by drought and reckless overplowing across the Great Plains, not greenhouse gases, proof that extreme natural variability can rival anything the modern climate produces.

NOAA's broader trend line shows the agency says June-through-August temperatures have warmed roughly 0.46°F per decade since 1970, and four of the five hottest U.S. summers on record have all landed in the past five years, with 2022 and 2024 ranking fourth and fifth. A single hot summer stacked on a natural El Niño swing is a different claim than a decades-long warming trend, and NOAA's report makes both.

Not just an American problem

Spain posted its own record Wednesday. The State Meteorological Agency, AEMET, said the country endured 61 days of heatwave conditions this year, 20 more than the previous record set in 2022, with a summer average of 24.5°C, the hottest since Spanish records began in 1961, according to Euronews. AEMET noted a fresh heatwave ran September 2-7, unusually late in the year, and large wildfires exposed gaps in forest-fire prevention staffing in Madrid, Aragón and Castilla y León.

Back in the U.S., wildfires have burned through 8.4 million acres so far in 2026 across more than 53,000 fires, according to Yale Climate Connections data. NOAA is forecasting a warmer-than-usual September for much of the country. Whether the incoming El Niño pushes 2026 or 2027 into the record books as the hottest year globally now depends on data NOAA won't finalize until early next year.