West Island has warmed about 3.7°F between 1971 and 2024.
About 0.7°F per decade, measured from West Island's official daily weather records, 1971–2024. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.
Is that a lot? West Island's climate has warmed faster than most other cities across Oceania.
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
+2.2°F
1970s
78.5°F
→
Recent
80.8°F
A steady upward drift
Hot days above 90°F
3 more days
1970s
0 / yr
→
Recent
3 / yr
More days of serious heat
Rainy days
about the same
1970s
0 / yr
→
Recent
0 / yr
Rainfall pattern about the same
West Island's temperature, year by year
Average temperature for each year from 1971 to 2024.
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.
January has warmed the most — about 0.6°F. The warming runs across the whole year, not just one season.
Methodology & sources
Temperature — 1991–2020 normals computed from 28 years of daily observations at Cocos Island Aero, a weather station, about 3 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.