Lyon or Nice: which climate?
Lyon (France) has a temperate oceanic climate, whereas Nice (France) has a warm-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 Lyon and to Nice.
Nice is warmer than Lyon by 2.0 °C in annual average: 13.3 °C against 11.3 °C.
Lyon gets more rain than Nice: 961 mm per year against 859 mm.
Nice gets 10.2 hours of sunshine per day on average, against 8.8 hours in Lyon.
Lyon and Nice are warming at the same rate: about +2.5 °C between 1940 and 2025 on both sides.
Lyon averages 14 hot days (≥ 30 °C) and 54 frost days per year; Nice averages 1 and 11.
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 | Lyon | Nice | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mean daily temperature | 11.3 °C | 13.3 °C | +2.0 °C |
| Average daily high | 15.6 °C | 16.7 °C | +1.1 °C |
| Average daily low | 7.3 °C | 10.0 °C | +2.7 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 961 mm | 859 mm | -102 mm |
| Sunshine / day | 8.8 h | 10.2 h | +1.4 h |
| Hot days (≥ 30 °C) | 14 d/yr | 1 d/yr | -13 d/yr |
| Frost days (< 0 °C) | 54 d/yr | 11 d/yr | -43 d/yr |
| Rainy days (≥ 1 mm) | 141 d/yr | 109 d/yr | -32 d/yr |
| Mean relative humidity | 75 % | 76 % | negligible |
| Average peak wind | 14.9 km/h | 11.1 km/h | -3.8 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.