Bordeaux or Milan: which climate?

Bordeaux (France) has a temperate oceanic climate, whereas Milan (Italy) has a humid subtropical 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 Bordeaux and to Milan.

Bordeaux and Milan have the same mean annual temperature, about 13.4 °C: the gap between the two cities is too small to be told apart from the noise in the data.

Milan gets more rain than Bordeaux: 1,146 mm per year against 778 mm.

Milan has warmed by +3.2 °C between 1940 and 2025, against +1.7 °C in Bordeaux. Milan is therefore warming faster than Bordeaux. Both trends are statistically significant.

Bordeaux averages 19 hot days (≥ 30 °C) and 26 frost days per year; Milan averages 28 and 46.

Data from ERA5 reanalysis (Copernicus Climate Change Service), redistributed under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. Normals are recomputed whenever the archive is updated.

IndicatorBordeauxMilanDifference
Mean daily temperature13.4 °C13.2 °Cnegligible
Average daily high18.0 °C17.6 °Cnegligible
Average daily low9.2 °C9.3 °Cnegligible
Annual rainfall778 mm1,146 mm+368 mm
Sunshine / day9.1 h9.3 hnegligible
Hot days (≥ 30 °C)19 d/yr28 d/yr+9 d/yr
Frost days (< 0 °C)26 d/yr46 d/yr+20 d/yr
Rainy days (≥ 1 mm)126 d/yr115 d/yr-11 d/yr
Mean relative humidity76 %73 %-3 %
Average peak wind14.9 km/h9.9 km/h-5.0 km/h

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.

Temperature month by month

Rainfall month by month

Bordeaux climateMilan climate