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The month of February 2026 was the fifth warmest on record globally, with Western Europe witnessing extreme rainfall and widespread flooding. The Arctic recorded the third-lowest sea ice extent for this month, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), said in a statement.
There were intense storms and precipitation across France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco, leading to severe flooding that caused widespread damage and loss of life and livelihoods. February also saw severe flooding in other parts of the world, including Australia, Mozambique, and Botswana.
“The extreme events of February 2026 highlight the growing impacts of climate change and the pressing need for global action. With global temperatures reaching 1.49°C above pre-industrial levels – the fifth-warmest February on record – Europe experienced stark temperature contrasts. Exceptional atmospheric rivers - narrow bands of very moist air – brought record rainfall and widespread flooding to western and southern Europe, while Arctic sea ice extent ranked as the third lowest for the month,” the statement quoted Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF.
The average surface air temperature in February 2026 was 13.26°C, 0.53°C above the 1991-2020 average for the month. The warmest February on record was in 2024.
“February 2026 was 1.49°C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level, according to the ERA5 dataset,” noted the statement.
The average temperature over European land for February 2026 was one of the three coldest in the past 14 years at -0.07°C, 0.10°C below the 1991-2020 average for February.
However, as the statement added, there was a strong contrast in average temperature across Europe, with western, southern and southeast Europe experiencing above-average temperatures, while Fennoscandia, the Baltic States, and northwest Russia had cold conditions.
Outside the continent, warmer-than-average temperatures occurred across the United States, northeast Canada, West Asia, central Asia, and east Antarctica; in contrast, cold conditions occurred across Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, and northern Russia.
Meanwhile, the winter in the continent was one of the two coldest winters in the last 13 years at 0.09°C above the 1991-2020 average.
“For Europe, the past winter Boreal winter temperatures largely reflected the regional contrasts in temperature and precipitation anomalies experienced in February,” according to the statement.
The average sea surface temperature (SST) for February 2026 over 60°S-60°N was 20.88°C, the joint second-highest value on record for the month (with February 2025), and 0.18°C below the January 2024 record.
“There was a notable SST gradient between cold SSTs in the central and west North Atlantic and warm SSTs in the subtropical North Atlantic which likely favoured the development of storms that reached Europe,” according to Copernicus.
The average Arctic sea ice extent in February was five per cent below average, ranking third lowest on record for the month.
“Regionally, sea ice cover was below average in the Labrador Sea, Baffin Bay and the Sea of Okhotsk. It was unusually high in the Greenland Sea, where sea ice extent reached a 22-year high for February,” the statement highlighted.
In the Antarctic, the monthly sea ice extent was close to average for February, in sharp contrast to the much below-average extents (25 per cent to 33 per cent below average) observed over the past four years.
“Daily Antarctic sea ice extent likely reached its summer minimum on 22 February. This minimum was near the middle of the range for the past 48 years, in contrast to the record or near-record lows of the previous four years. The lowest minimum occurred in 2023,” according to the statement.