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Has the climate in Timaru changed?

Timaru has warmed about 1.1°F between 1997 and 2024.

About 0.4°F per decade, measured from Timaru's official daily weather records, 1997–2024. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.

Is that a lot? Timaru's warming is broadly in line with other cities in New Zealand — 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
+0.8°F
1970s
50.5°F
Recent
51.3°F
A steady upward drift

Timaru's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1997 to 2024.

48°50°52°54°1997: 49.5°F1998: 51.5°F1999: 51.5°F2000: 50.7°F2001: 50.9°F2002: 50.5°F2003: 50.1°F2004: 49.4°F2005: 50.7°F2006: 49.8°F2007: 50.4°F2008: 50.9°F2009: 49.7°F2010: 51.1°F2011: 50.3°F2012: 49.9°F2013: 51.5°F2014: 50.4°F2015: 50.6°F2016: 51.2°F2017: 50.8°F2018: 51.1°F2019: 51.5°F2020: 51.1°F2021: 51.5°F2022: 51.4°F2023: 52.1°F2024: 51.3°Flong-term trend19972000201020202024
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 25 years of daily observations at Timaru Aerodrome Aws, 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 →