Has the climate in Donostia / San Sebastián changed?
Donostia / San Sebastián has warmed about 2.9°F since 1971.
About 0.5°F per decade, measured from Donostia / San Sebastián'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? Donostia / San Sebastián's warming is broadly in line with other cities in Spain — 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
3 fewer nights
1970s
8 / yr
→
Recent
5 / yr
Milder winters — fewer frosts
Average temperature
+1.8°F
1970s
55.1°F
→
Recent
57.0°F
A steady upward drift
Hot days above 90°F
2 more days
1970s
2 / yr
→
Recent
4 / yr
More days of serious heat
Rainy days
about the same
1970s
182 / yr
→
Recent
182 / yr
Rainfall pattern about the same
Donostia / San Sebastián'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.
April has warmed the most — about 2.2°F. The warming runs across the whole year, not just one season.
Methodology & sources
Temperature — 1991–2020 normals computed from 30 years of daily observations at Biarritz-pays-basque, a weather station, about 40 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.