Climate-Zone.com

HomeCitiesCanadaOntarioLondonTools › Climate trends

Has the climate in London changed?

London has warmed about 2.1°F between 1980 and 2020.

About 0.5°F per decade, measured from London's official daily weather records, 1980–2020. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.

Is that a lot? London'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
+1.4°F
1970s
47.7°F
Recent
49.1°F
A steady upward drift

London's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1980 to 2020.

44°46°48°50°52°54°1980: 53.0°F1981: 46.2°F1982: 46.3°F1983: 47.4°F1984: 46.7°F1985: 46.9°F1986: 47.0°F1987: 48.8°F1988: 47.2°F1989: 46.0°F1990: 48.9°F1991: 49.4°F1992: 46.6°F1993: 46.7°F1994: 46.5°F1995: 47.8°F1996: 46.5°F1997: 46.9°F1998: 51.2°F1999: 49.0°F2000: 47.5°F2001: 49.2°F2002: 48.8°F2003: 46.6°F2004: 47.4°F2005: 48.1°F2006: 49.9°F2007: 49.2°F2008: 45.0°F2009: 47.4°F2010: 50.0°F2011: 52.8°F2012: 52.9°F2013: 47.5°F2014: 45.5°F2015: 47.9°F2016: 50.0°F2017: 50.4°F2018: 49.9°F2019: 49.6°F2020: 49.3°Flong-term trend19801990200020102020
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°+2.0°January: +0.7°F+0.7JFebruary: +0.3°F+0.3FMarch: +0.5°F+0.5MApril: -0.1°F-0.1AMay: +0.6°F+0.6MJune: +1.2°F+1.2JJuly: +0.6°F+0.6JAugust: +0.7°F+0.7ASeptember: +1.2°F+1.2SOctober: +1.1°F+1.1ONovember: +0.7°F+0.7NDecember: +1.9°F+1.9D

December has warmed the most — about 1.9°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 ST Thomas Wpcp, a weather station, about 24 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.

How we build these numbers →