Global Average Temperature 2026

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This has been an interesting first three months of 2026. 

So far ( date provided by Copernicus) :

January 2026 was the fifth-warmest January globally. 

February 2025 was the fifth-warmest January globally. 

Notables so far were the variations in temperature across N/A and parts of Europe.  These regions hosted the lion's share of what negative anomaly contribution there was that went into the total state of the planetary system. 

The graphic below illustrates these idiosyncrasies.

( I corroborated the above with NASA's releases and they conform )

March is not yet available at either Copernicus or NASA's monthly releases. NASA typically releases their finding s around the 10th of each month so we expect those soon. 

We know already that March 2026 was the warmest March on record across N/A mid latitude ( conterminous US), per more sources than need to really list here.  Go take a look.   However, again, both in data, as well as "sensibly" experienced, this was not as readily observed for the eastern mid latitude continent.  Nevertheless, these eastern geographies accumulated +2 to +3 positive anomaly for the month - so ours was likely still negative relative to the whole continent, which can be ratified soon enough.  This may or may not be reflected in the total graphics including the Mid Atlantic and eastern Ohio Valley and some parts of the SE.  

Personally, given a-priori awareness of the global circulation modes for the past 7 months and the persistence thereof, .. I suspect we'll see a repeat of relative offsets over eastern N/A and N-W Europe, while the rest of the world observes a ranking somewhere in the 3rd to 6th place for March.   

The beat goes on...

[Typhoon Tip]

  Graph/data provided by https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/?dm_id=world

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Welp ... I was wrong about March when it comes to predicting the product result, below.  I had presumed recently that we'd result a more obvious local geographic ( 'local' relative to the entire world) cool zone/island anomaly relative to the whole "inferno" that is clearly and coherently, unarguably the product's character below... eh hm.  Said island had been a persistent leitmotif since late last autumn... 

Still, you know, it really didn't sensibly come off that way?  I recall seeing March colder locally comparing to the whole country on a lot of days... In fairness I think what is actually going on is that this product below is the "anomaly".  What we experienced may have technically been a warm anomaly, just not as demonstrative or obviously so as everywhere else... SO, in that vein and sense it might still qualify.  

Also, having that impressively deep cold garland lording over top the Canadian Shield while there's a quasar spanning the conterminous U.S., definitely helps explain why we've been getting these wild 40 to as much as 50+ F air mass whiplashes, too.

Anyway, here is the tabulation and mean for March provided by https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

 

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[Devidbrain]

Interesting breakdown of the early 2026 anomalies, especially the regional contrasts across North America and Europe. It highlights how short-term cooling pockets can still exist within an overall warm global trend. It will be important to see how ENSO conditions and ocean heat content influence the rest of the year’s temperature progression.