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Has the climate in Timbuktu changed?

Timbuktu has warmed about 0.6°F between 1993 and 2011.

About 0.6°F per decade, measured from Timbuktu's official daily weather records, 1993–2011. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.

Is that a lot? Timbuktu's warming is broadly in line with other cities across Africa — 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
+1.0°F
1970s
85.6°F
Recent
86.6°F
A steady upward drift

Timbuktu's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1993 to 2011.

84°86°88°1993: 85.7°F2002: 85.6°F2003: 85.5°F2004: 85.9°F2005: 86.1°F2006: 86.7°F2007: 85.8°F2008: 85.5°F2009: 86.3°F2010: 87.5°F2011: 86.1°Flong-term trend199320102011
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.

Methodology & sources

Temperature — 1991–2020 normals computed from 17 years of daily observations at Tombouctou, a weather station, about 5 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.

How we build these numbers →