CNR certifies Italy's hottest summer since 1950: national average at 24.3 degrees

The Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche has published the consolidated data for summer 2026 in Italy: the national average temperature, measured two metres above the ground, was 24.3 degrees. This is the highest value in the Italian series since 1950. The reference indicated by the CNR is the Era5-Land dataset from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

The month that weighs most heavily is August, which closed with a national average of 25.6 degrees.

Why the same anomaly has two numbers

The most technically interesting point in the data concerns precisely August, and it is worth explaining because it is the source of nearly all the misunderstandings in discussions about climate. The CNR indicates two anomalies for the same month: +5.2 degrees relative to the 1951-1980 climatology and +3.5 degrees relative to the 1991-2020 climatology.

These are not two conflicting measurements: they are the same temperature compared against two different reference periods. The first describes how far August 2026 departs from a climate now distant in time; the second how far it departs from the most recent thirty years, which already incorporate part of the warming that has taken place. The gap between the two numbers — a 1.7-degree difference between the two anomalies — is in itself information: it measures how much the comparison baseline has shifted.

When a headline reports an anomaly without stating which period it is calculated against, that number is not verifiable.

Metric	Value
National summer average 2026	24.3 °C
National average August 2026	25.6 °C
August anomaly vs 1951-1980	+5.2 °C
August anomaly vs 1991-2020	+3.5 °C
Lombardy summer anomaly vs 1991-2020	+3.1 °C

The regional data

A second reading, independent of the first and produced by a different body, comes from the Agenzia Regionale per la Protezione dell’Ambiente della Lombardia. The Centro Regionale Idrometeo e Clima recorded a summer anomaly of +3.1 degrees relative to the 1991-2020 period and counted five heat waves.

The comparison between the Lombardy data and the national data must be made with caution: both use the same, more recent reference period, but they cover different territorial scales and are processed by different bodies, with their own measurement networks.

What we don’t know

We do not know the geographic distribution of the summer anomaly within the country: a national average does not indicate which regions contributed most. We do not have, in the available material, the summer’s precipitation data, which is the other half of any seasonal balance.

We do not have the position of previous summers in the ranking: we know that 2026 is in first place since 1950, but not by how much it exceeded second place.

The number to retain, with its explicit scope, is this: 24.3 degrees national average at two metres above the ground in summer 2026, the highest value in the Italian series since 1950, based on Era5-Land reanalysis data.

Sources: RaiNews (CNR data); ARPA Lombardia (Centro Regionale Idrometeo e Clima).