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Has the climate in Sydney changed?

Sydney has warmed about 2.4°F between 1971 and 2014.

About 0.6°F per decade, measured from Sydney's official daily weather records, 1971–2014. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.

Is that a lot? Sydney'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
42.0°F
Recent
43.4°F
A steady upward drift

Sydney's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1971 to 2014.

38°40°42°44°46°1971: 42.8°F1972: 40.3°F1973: 42.2°F1974: 40.2°F1975: 41.2°F1976: 41.7°F1977: 42.1°F1978: 41.1°F1979: 43.5°F1980: 40.7°F1981: 43.7°F1982: 41.3°F1983: 43.9°F1984: 43.1°F1985: 40.5°F1986: 40.3°F1987: 41.9°F1988: 42.0°F1989: 41.2°F1990: 42.9°F1991: 42.0°F1992: 40.6°F1993: 40.9°F1994: 42.3°F1995: 42.4°F1996: 42.8°F1997: 40.8°F1998: 44.2°F1999: 45.9°F2000: 43.4°F2001: 43.6°F2002: 42.4°F2003: 42.6°F2004: 42.1°F2005: 43.9°F2006: 45.5°F2007: 42.4°F2008: 43.5°F2009: 43.0°F2010: 45.5°F2011: 43.7°F2012: 45.7°F2013: 43.6°F2014: 39.6°Flong-term trend197119801990200020102014
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.

0.0°+0.5°+1.0°+1.5°+2.0°January: +0.8°F+0.8JFebruary: +1.5°F+1.5FMarch: +0.9°F+0.9MApril: +0.9°F+0.9AMay: +0.4°F+0.4MJune: +0.0°F+0.0JJuly: +1.0°F+1.0JAugust: +1.0°F+1.0ASeptember: +1.9°F+1.9SOctober: +1.4°F+1.4ONovember: +1.3°F+1.3NDecember: +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 24 years of daily observations at Sydney A, a weather station, about 11 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.

How we build these numbers →