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Has the climate in Delta changed?

Delta has warmed about 1.1°F between 1977 and 2020.

About 0.3°F per decade, measured from Delta's official daily weather records, 1977–2020. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.

Is that a lot? Delta's warming is broadly in line with other cities in Canada — 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.

Average temperature
+0.8°F
1970s
50.4°F
→
Recent
51.2°F
A steady upward drift

Delta's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1977 to 2020.

42°44°46°48°50°52°54°1977: 51.8°F1978: 49.4°F1979: 49.8°F1980: 49.9°F1981: 50.9°F1982: 49.4°F1983: 50.8°F1984: 49.3°F1985: 48.2°F1986: 51.0°F1987: 52.0°F1988: 51.3°F1989: 50.8°F1990: 51.1°F1991: 50.9°F1992: 52.3°F1993: 50.4°F1994: 51.8°F1995: 52.1°F1996: 50.2°F1997: 52.2°F1998: 52.6°F1999: 43.7°F2000: 50.8°F2001: 50.4°F2002: 50.8°F2003: 51.6°F2004: 52.7°F2005: 51.4°F2006: 51.0°F2007: 50.3°F2008: 51.9°F2009: 49.5°F2010: 51.7°F2011: 49.8°F2012: 50.8°F2013: 51.5°F2014: 52.4°F2015: 53.4°F2016: 52.9°F2017: 51.2°F2018: 52.5°F2019: 51.5°F2020: 47.2°Flong-term trend197719801990200020102020
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.

-0.5°0.0°+0.5°+1.0°+1.5°January: +1.1°F+1.1JFebruary: +0.1°F+0.1FMarch: -0.2°F-0.2MApril: +0.1°F+0.1AMay: +1.1°F+1.1MJune: +0.8°F+0.8JJuly: +1.4°F+1.4JAugust: +1.0°F+1.0ASeptember: +0.9°F+0.9SOctober: +0.4°F+0.4ONovember: +0.8°F+0.8NDecember: +1.0°F+1.0D

July has warmed the most — about 1.4°F. The warming runs across the whole year, not just one season.

Methodology & sources

Temperature — 1991–2020 normals computed from 27 years of daily observations at Richmond Nature Park, a weather station, about 14 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.

How we build these numbers →