By Park Hye-won, The Herald Business
May 2026 ranked as the second-hottest May on record for the planet since observations began.
The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Wednesday that the average global surface temperature last month reached 15.81 degrees Celsius — the second-highest for any May, behind only 2024.
Last month's surface temperature was 0.55 degrees above the May average for 1991–2020 and 1.42 degrees above the pre-industrial May average for 1850–1900.
Europe endured an exceptional heat wave late last month after a mass of hot air swept north from North Africa across the Mediterranean and became trapped under a high-pressure system.
Temperatures topped 40 degrees Celsius across southern and western Europe, breaking May heat records in Portugal, the United Kingdom and France. In Spain, 101 people died from heat-related causes over the month — the highest toll since the country began tracking such deaths in 2015.
Ocean temperatures also ranked second-highest on record. The average sea surface temperature between 60 degrees south and 60 degrees north latitude stood at 20.90 degrees Celsius last month, just below the all-time May record of 20.93 degrees set in 2024.
If El Niño develops, Earth could surpass the record heat set in 2024. El Niño is a climate phenomenon in which sea surface temperatures near the equatorial eastern Pacific run at least 0.5 degrees above normal for five or more consecutive months. The World Meteorological Organization put the probability of El Niño forming between June and August this year at 80 percent.
klee@heraldcorp.com
