Which Cities Have Warmed the Most Since the 1950s?

Climate change is usually reported as a single global number — around 1.2 °C of warming since pre-industrial times. But nobody lives in the global average. To see what that number feels like on the ground, we compared two ten-year windows of daily temperature records for each of our 51 flagship cities: 1950–1959 versus 2015–2024, focusing on each city's warmest month — the one you notice most.

The result: 31 of the 51 cities are clearly warmer in their hottest month than they were in the 1950s. Beijing tops the ranking, where a typical June day now reaches 33°C (91°F) against 29°C (83°F) seven decades ago — a jump of 4°C. The median city in our list has warmed by about 1.3°C in its warmest month, while 20 cities show little change or a slight cooling in this particular metric — a reminder that regional climate is lumpier than the global trend.

Each city name links to its full climate guide, with month-by-month normals for temperature, rainfall, sunshine, wind, and snow.

How we computed this

For every city we averaged the daily maximum temperature of its current warmest month across two ten-year windows of the Open-Meteo ERA5 reanalysis archive: 1950-01-01 to 1959-12-31 and 2015-01-01 to 2024-12-31. Ten-year windows keep the comparison above the noise of individual hot or cold summers. ERA5 is a reanalysis — a physics-based reconstruction that blends historical observations into a consistent global record — so values for any single day are estimates, but decade averages are robust.

Two honest caveats. First, part of the warming in fast-growing cities reflects the urban heat island effect on top of the global trend. Second, we rank by the warmest month's daytime high — one clear, comparable metric — but a city can warm faster in winter or at night than this table shows.

Explore any city's full record on its climate guide, or browse the complete list on the all cities page.