April 2026 4th-Warmest Global April On Record; Earth's Oceans Saw 2nd-Warmest Temps Recorded For The Same Month
April 2026 was the world’s fourth-warmest April in analyses of global weather data going back to 1850, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, reported April 11. NASA and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service rated April 2026 as the third-warmest April. The global-average temperature for January-April 2026 was the fifth-highest on record, NOAA said.
According to NCEI’s statistical analysis, there is about a 93% chance that 2026 will rank among the four warmest years on record. This statistics-based product is not yet designed to explicitly take El Niño or La Niña events into account, so with a global-atmosphere-warming El Niño event about to unfold, the odds may be higher still.
?w=974&ssl=1
Global land areas had their seventh-warmest April on record in 2026, while global oceans had their second-warmest April, falling just 0.05 degrees Celsius (0.09°F) short of the record set in April 2024, NOAA said. Several continents experienced a top-10 warmest April on record, including Asia (seventh-warmest), Antarctica (eighth-warmest), and Oceania (tied for ninth-warmest). Although North America, South America, Europe, and the Arctic also experienced above-average April temperatures, they did not rank among their top 10.
?w=974&ssl=1
The world recorded its highest burned area for any January-April during the past 15 years, with more than 150 million hectares burned globally – 22% higher than the previous database high set in 2020 and about double the recent average for this period. In the U.S., the burned area has been close to the highest on record, according to the ECMWF and National Interagency Fire Center. More than a million acres of that U.S. burned area – more than half of the total – was in the Great Plains, mainly in Nebraska, where that state’s worst wildfires on record raged during a record-warm March.
EDIT
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/05/april-2026-earths-fourth-warmest-april-on-record/
= new reply since forum marked as read
