May 2026 ranks as second-warmest month globally amid rising fire activity and shrinking sea ice
Global temperatures in May 2026 were the second highest on record, while burned area reached a 15-year peak and Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents fell to near-record lows.
Global average temperatures for May 2026 were the second-warmest since records began in 1850, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, NASA and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service. The January-May 2026 period ranked as the fourth-highest on record, and statistical analysis gives a 95% probability that 2026 will finish among the four warmest years.
The planet also saw a surge in burned area, with more than 150 million hectares burned worldwide from January to May – a 22% increase over the previous high in 2020 and roughly double the recent average. In the United States, the burned area for the same period was the largest in at least a decade, driven in part by extensive wildfires in Nebraska in March.
Snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere was below average in May, though not among the ten lowest since 1967. Western U.S. snow cover was only 49% of the May average, the lowest in a 26-year satellite record, while the contiguous U.S. 12-month average snowfall reached a record low.
For the contiguous United States, March-May 2026 was the second-warmest spring on record, with only 2012 being warmer. May 2026 ranked as the 28th-warmest May for the region, and all multi-month periods of four months or longer ending in May were the hottest on record for at least the past five years.
An El Niño event is expected to develop in the coming months. NOAA’s May outlook gave an 82% chance of El Niño emergence between May and July 2026, with a 27% chance of strong El Niño conditions during the peak of the hurricane season. Current sea-surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region are 0.7 °C above average, exceeding the threshold for a weak El Niño.
Arctic sea-ice extent in May was the second-lowest in the 48-year satellite record, behind 2016, while Antarctic sea-ice extent also fell to the second-lowest May value on record. Both polar regions experienced above-average temperatures for the month.
Extreme temperature records were noted worldwide, including a high of 51.5 °C in Pakistan and a low of –40.8 °C in Greenland. National heat records were tied or broken in Chad and Bahrain, and a series of all-time May heat records were set at stations across Asia, Africa and the Americas.
