Is Cape Town Getting Hotter?

Short answer: yes. Cape Town's average temperature has climbed roughly 0.9 degrees since the 1900s. That puts it in the lower half among the world's major cities for total warming. Here is what 146 years of data actually shows.

Unlike some cities where the warming is sharply back-loaded, Cape Town's temperature rise has been fairly gradual across the full record.

Cape Town's warming is 0.7 degrees below the average for the 29 cities we track globally.

Among the world's major cities, Cape Town's warming rate places it below the average. Here is how Cape Town stacks up against other global cities.

Temperature data on this page comes from the Global Historical Climatology Network version 4 (GHCN v4), maintained by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. GHCN v4 contains monthly mean temperature data for over 25,000 stations across the globe, with records dating back to the 18th century for some stations. The data has been quality-controlled and homogenised using the Pairwise Homogeneity Algorithm to remove artificial discontinuities from station moves, equipment changes, and observation practice changes.

Cape Town's primary station is Cape Town Royal Observatory, with records spanning 1857-2002. The "change" figures compare each decade's average to the 1900s baseline. Note that some of the warming in large cities is attributable to the urban heat island effect rather than regional climate change alone. The figures shown here include both components, as they represent what the city actually experiences.

NASA GISTEMP analysis, which processes GHCN v4 data, is a product of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It is produced as a US Government work and is in the public domain.