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Port-aux-Français has a tundra climate.
Cold all year — even summer stays cool. Here's what that means in plain terms.
What this climate feels like
The four things a regular visitor actually wants to know:
Highs near 12°C in February.
Lows near −1°C in July.
About 665 mm of rain a year. Wettest in June.
Overcast skies dominate much of the year.
What "tundra" means
Climate scientists sort every place on Earth into about 30 climate types, based on how hot, cold, wet and dry it is across the year. Port-aux-Français's type — tundra — sits in the broad family of polar and high-altitude climates.
Researchers write climate types as a short letter code. Here is what each letter means:
Cities with the same climate as Port-aux-Français
A tundra climate (ET) — these recognizable cities share it. If you know one of them, you know roughly what to expect.
Port-aux-Français sits near a climate boundary
This city's climate sits within about 2.1 °C of the next type along. A slightly cooler or warmer decade could change which side of the boundary it lands on — but the lived weather doesn't change at the line.
Has Port-aux-Français's climate type changed?
Stable — Port-aux-Français's climate has held the same type between the 1971–2000 and 1991–2020 normals. The label is steady; the climate beneath it is still warming.
What this climate means for you
No real agriculture — cool-tolerant grasses, lichens, mosses; greenhouses for tiny short-summer harvests.
Summer (June–August) brings tundra hikes, wildflowers and the midnight sun. Winter is for aurora and dogsledding under extreme cold.
Permafrost, polar night in winter, brief sunlit summers. Heating dominates everything.
Where these numbers come from
The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from Port-aux-Français's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind Port-aux-Français's main climate page, so the two always agree.
Long-range climate maps measure things slightly differently and can place a city in a neighbouring category. Where they differ, this page uses the measured station record as the climate today.
Methodology & sources
Temperature & precipitation — 1991–2020 normals computed from 30 years of daily observations at Port-aux-francais (iles Kerguelen), a weather station, about 2 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.