2026 Set to be Hottest Year on Record
9th November 2026
The predictions comes as world leaders and negotiators gather in Turkey for the opening of COP31, the latest UN climate summit. The heat has had a significant impact on the Alps this summer. NEW
2026 Set to be Hottest Year on Record
The predictions comes as world leaders and negotiators gather in Turkey for the opening of COP31, the latest UN climate summit. The hear had a significant impact on the Alps this summer.
This summer has seen huge glacier melt and at one stage all summer glacier ski areas were shut.
It was the first that happened since summer skiing began 60 years ago.
Glaciers in the Pyrenees had their third-largest annual thinning on record in 2025-2026.
The mountain range’s hottest summer on record accelerated melting despite exceptionally heavy spring snowfall.
Summer 2026 was the warmest ever recorded in the Pyrenees, with temperatures averaging 3.4 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 baseline.
Scientists at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology recorded the losses.
They rank behind only those of the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons since comparable annual measurements began.
Researchers warn that the remaining active glaciers could disappear within the next decade as rising temperatures and physical deterioration accelerate their decline.
Andorra Pyrenees. Image © PlanetSKI
Berkeley Earth, the independent US research group, said that even with two months of the year left it is 95% confident that 2026 will surpass the previous record set in 2024.
The impact of rising heat has been felt acutely in recent months by countries attending COP, with extensive wildfires across Europe and the sudden glacier collapse in Nepal which killed more than 1,000 people.
“We have had a run of record warm years,” said Dr Robert Rohde, of Berkeley Earth.
“That is what we expect as global warming progresses… glaciers collapsing, record-breaking heatwaves and droughts.”
On Friday, the EU’s Copernicus climate service, external confirmed that October was the hottest on record.
Rohde warned this is just the start.
“There is potential for much larger and much more dramatic changes down the line,” he said.
“The main driver of rising global temperatures has been the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, largely caused by burning fossil fuels.
- Another heatwave hits the Alps
- Melting glaciers are redrawing Swiss maps
- Europe’s heatwaves git glaciers hard
Grande Motte glacier, Tignes. August 2026. Image c/o David Morgan.
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