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Has the climate in Tawau changed?

Tawau has warmed about 1.5°F between 1971 and 2024.

About 0.3°F per decade, measured from Tawau'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? Tawau's warming is broadly in line with other cities in Malaysia — 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
+0.9°F
1970s
80.9°F
Recent
81.8°F
A steady upward drift
Hot days above 90°F
60 fewer days
1970s
136 / yr
Recent
76 / yr
Slightly fewer hot days
Rainy days
28 more days
1970s
155 / yr
Recent
183 / yr
Wetter on average

Tawau's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1971 to 2024.

78°80°82°84°1971: 80.0°F1972: 81.0°F1973: 81.5°F1974: 80.3°F1975: 79.9°F1976: 80.3°F1977: 80.6°F1978: 80.7°F1979: 80.9°F1980: 80.9°F1981: 81.2°F1982: 81.0°F1983: 81.6°F1984: 80.7°F1985: 81.2°F1986: 81.4°F1987: 82.0°F1988: 81.3°F1989: 80.9°F1990: 82.0°F1991: 81.6°F1992: 81.7°F1993: 81.3°F1994: 81.1°F1995: 81.5°F1996: 81.2°F1997: 81.8°F1998: 82.5°F1999: 80.9°F2000: 81.2°F2001: 81.7°F2002: 82.3°F2003: 82.1°F2004: 82.3°F2005: 81.5°F2006: 81.3°F2007: 81.2°F2008: 80.7°F2009: 81.7°F2010: 81.9°F2011: 81.0°F2012: 81.5°F2013: 82.1°F2014: 81.7°F2015: 82.7°F2016: 82.8°F2017: 81.8°F2018: 82.2°F2019: 82.0°F2020: 82.0°F2021: 81.4°F2022: 81.3°F2023: 82.3°F2024: 83.0°Flong-term trend1971198019902000201020202024
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 24 fewer 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°January: +0.8°F+0.8JFebruary: +0.7°F+0.7FMarch: +0.5°F+0.5MApril: +0.5°F+0.5AMay: +0.6°F+0.6MJune: +0.6°F+0.6JJuly: +0.7°F+0.7JAugust: +0.7°F+0.7ASeptember: +0.8°F+0.8SOctober: +0.5°F+0.5ONovember: +0.5°F+0.5NDecember: +0.6°F+0.6D

January has warmed the most — about 0.8°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 Sandakan, a weather station, about 185 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.

How we build these numbers →