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Has the climate in Chennai changed?

Chennai has warmed about 2°F between 1973 and 2024.

About 0.4°F per decade, measured from Chennai'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? Chennai's warming is broadly in line with other cities in India — 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
+1.3°F
1970s
82.7°F
Recent
84.1°F
A steady upward drift
Hot days above 90°F
2 more days
1970s
194 / yr
Recent
196 / yr
More days of serious heat
Rainy days
19 more days
1970s
63 / yr
Recent
82 / yr
Wetter on average

Chennai's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1973 to 2024.

80°82°84°86°1973: 83.4°F1974: 82.1°F1975: 82.3°F1976: 82.0°F1977: 82.9°F1978: 82.8°F1979: 83.3°F1980: 83.1°F1981: 82.3°F1982: 82.8°F1983: 83.0°F1984: 82.5°F1985: 82.4°F1986: 83.1°F1987: 83.4°F1988: 83.0°F1989: 82.1°F1990: 82.7°F1991: 83.0°F1992: 82.5°F1993: 82.5°F1994: 82.6°F1995: 82.6°F1996: 82.6°F1997: 83.4°F1998: 83.9°F1999: 83.2°F2000: 83.0°F2001: 83.2°F2002: 83.3°F2003: 83.4°F2004: 82.5°F2005: 82.7°F2006: 83.0°F2007: 82.0°F2008: 82.3°F2009: 84.3°F2010: 82.9°F2011: 82.9°F2012: 83.9°F2013: 83.0°F2014: 83.4°F2015: 84.0°F2016: 84.4°F2017: 84.7°F2018: 84.9°F2019: 85.6°F2020: 84.3°F2021: 84.0°F2022: 84.8°F2023: 84.7°F2024: 85.0°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 10 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°+1.5°January: +1.0°F+1.0JFebruary: +0.6°F+0.6FMarch: +0.8°F+0.8MApril: +0.5°F+0.5AMay: +0.2°F+0.2MJune: +0.1°F+0.1JJuly: +0.7°F+0.7JAugust: +0.4°F+0.4ASeptember: +0.5°F+0.5SOctober: +0.9°F+0.9ONovember: +1.0°F+1.0NDecember: +0.7°F+0.7D

January has warmed the most — about 1.0°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 Madras/minambakkam, 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 →