Is Toronto Getting Hotter?
The numbers don't lie. Toronto's average temperature is 2.2 degrees higher than it was in the 1900s. That's based on 164 years of station data, carefully homogenised to remove artifacts from equipment changes and station relocations.
The warming has been relatively steady across the full record, with each decade adding a consistent increment to the total.
Average Annual Temperature by Decade
Toronto has warmed 0.6 degrees more than the average across our global dataset of 29 cities.
Decade by Decade
| Decade | Avg Temp (C) | Change from 1900s |
|---|
How Toronto Compares Globally
Among the world's major cities, Toronto's warming rate places it in the upper tier. Here is how Toronto stacks up against other global cities.
Key Numbers
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About This Data
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.
Toronto's primary station is Toronto, with records spanning 1840-2003. 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.