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Has the climate in Kingston changed?

Kingston has warmed about 1.1°F between 1973 and 2024.

About 0.2°F per decade, measured from Kingston's official daily weather records, 1973–2024. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.

Is that a lot? Kingston's warming is broadly in line with other cities in Jamaica — 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
+0.6°F
1970s
81.8°F
Recent
82.4°F
A steady upward drift
Hot days above 90°F
16 more days
1970s
151 / yr
Recent
167 / yr
More days of serious heat
Rainy days
19 more days
1970s
30 / yr
Recent
49 / yr
Wetter on average

Kingston's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1973 to 2024.

79°81°83°85°1973: 81.9°F1974: 81.4°F1975: 81.4°F1976: 81.6°F1977: 82.4°F1978: 83.8°F1979: 82.8°F1980: 83.1°F1981: 83.6°F1982: 81.2°F1983: 81.6°F1984: 80.6°F1985: 80.6°F1986: 80.7°F1987: 82.2°F1988: 81.5°F1989: 80.7°F1990: 81.2°F1991: 81.3°F1992: 82.7°F1993: 81.7°F1994: 83.0°F1995: 82.6°F1996: 81.8°F1997: 83.5°F1998: 83.9°F1999: 82.4°F2000: 82.3°F2001: 82.7°F2002: 82.8°F2003: 83.1°F2004: 82.5°F2005: 81.9°F2006: 84.3°F2007: 82.9°F2008: 80.5°F2009: 81.1°F2010: 80.0°F2011: 80.2°F2012: 82.0°F2013: 82.7°F2014: 82.9°F2015: 83.5°F2016: 83.4°F2017: 82.8°F2018: 82.7°F2019: 82.7°F2020: 82.9°F2021: 82.6°F2022: 82.3°F2023: 84.0°F2024: 84.4°Flong-term trend1973198019902000201020202024
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.

In day-to-day terms, that long-term shift shows up as about 5 more days above 90°F compared with the 1970s.

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.

0.0°+0.5°+1.0°January: +0.9°F+0.9JFebruary: +0.8°F+0.8FMarch: +0.7°F+0.7MApril: +0.9°F+0.9AMay: +0.4°F+0.4MJune: +0.3°F+0.3JJuly: +0.3°F+0.3JAugust: +0.8°F+0.8ASeptember: +0.9°F+0.9SOctober: +0.4°F+0.4ONovember: +0.6°F+0.6NDecember: +0.8°F+0.8D

September has warmed the most — about 0.9°F. The warming runs across the whole year, not just one season.

Methodology & sources

Temperature — 1991–2020 normals computed from 26 years of daily observations at Norman Manley Intl, a weather station, about 7 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.

How we build these numbers →