Athens or Los Angeles: which climate?
Athens (Greece) has a hot-summer mediterranean climate, whereas Los Angeles (United States) has a hot-summer mediterranean climate, according to the Köppen-Geiger classification.
The values compared here are normals computed over 86 complete calendar years, from 1940 to 2025, using ERA5 reanalysis data from the Copernicus programme. The same method and the same period apply to Athens and to Los Angeles.
Athens and Los Angeles have the same mean annual temperature, about 17.5 °C: the gap between the two cities is too small to be told apart from the noise in the data.
Athens and Los Angeles receive comparable annual rainfall, on the order of 364 mm.
Los Angeles gets 11.2 hours of sunshine per day on average, against 10.4 hours in Athens.
Athens and Los Angeles are warming at the same rate: about +1.6 °C between 1940 and 2025 on both sides.
Athens averages 85 hot days (≥ 30 °C) and 3 frost days per year; Los Angeles averages 62 and 1.
Data from ERA5 reanalysis (Copernicus Climate Change Service), redistributed under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. Normals are recomputed whenever the archive is updated.
| Indicator | Athens | Los Angeles | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mean daily temperature | 17.5 °C | 17.4 °C | negligible |
| Average daily high | 22.1 °C | 23.9 °C | +1.8 °C |
| Average daily low | 13.2 °C | 12.4 °C | -0.8 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 364 mm | 352 mm | negligible |
| Sunshine / day | 10.4 h | 11.2 h | +0.8 h |
| Hot days (≥ 30 °C) | 85 d/yr | 62 d/yr | -23 d/yr |
| Frost days (< 0 °C) | 3 d/yr | 1 d/yr | negligible |
| Rainy days (≥ 1 mm) | 59 d/yr | 31 d/yr | -28 d/yr |
| Mean relative humidity | 64 % | 63 % | negligible |
| Average peak wind | 15.4 km/h | 13.3 km/h | negligible |
A difference is only reported when it exceeds the resolution of the data. ERA5 is a reanalysis on a grid of about 31 km: two nearby cities often fall in the same cell, and below half a degree you are reading the grid, not the climate.