About 0.5°F per decade, measured from Newcastle's official daily weather records, 1971–2025. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.
Is that a lot? Newcastle's warming is broadly in line with other cities in Australia — neither unusually fast nor unusually slow.
What has actually changed
Each card compares the 1970s (the first ten years of the
record) with recent years (the last ten) — the same span
the headline and the chart use.
Freezing nights
about the same
1970s
0 / yr
→
Recent
0 / yr
Winters about as cold as before
Average temperature
+1.7°F
1970s
64.2°F
→
Recent
65.9°F
A steady upward drift
Hot days above 90°F
1 more day
1970s
9 / yr
→
Recent
10 / yr
More days of serious heat
Rainy days
6 fewer days
1970s
138 / yr
→
Recent
132 / yr
Drier on average
Newcastle's temperature, year by year
Average temperature for each year from 1971 to 2025.
a warmer-than-average year a cooler-than-average year
Each bar is one year. Most recent years sit above the older ones.
Some recent years still came in cool — warming is a slope,
not a straight climb.
When in the year the change shows up
How much warmer each month is now than in the 1970s.
Useful if you garden or care about a particular season —
otherwise the headline above already has the answer.
September has warmed the most — about 1.5°F. The warming runs across the whole year, not just one season.
Methodology & sources
Temperature — 1991–2020 normals computed from 29 years of daily observations at Newcastle Nobbys Signal Statio, a weather station, about 2 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.