Africa experienced widespread heat in September, marked by extreme regional temperature departures across the Sahel, East Africa, and North Africa…
Top 5 Countries: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa, and Kenya
Summary
Africa experienced widespread heat in September, marked by extreme regional temperature departures across the Sahel, East Africa, and North Africa. South Sudan and Sudan suffered intense thermal anomalies, while Morocco logged its warmest September on record since national baseline tracking began in 1981. Widespread rainfall deficits across parts of the Horn of Africa coincided with persistent inundation in South Sudan's Sudd wetlands. The overarching warmth comes as a strong El Niño in the tropical Pacific intensifies, with forecasting models giving a 100% probability of it reaching Very Strong intensity in Sep-Nov. Outlooks indicate that elevated warmth and altered monsoon rainfall patterns will persist across much of the continent into late autumn and early winter.
This month in numbers
For September 2026, Africa as a whole recorded a 1-month average temperature anomaly of +1.24°C above the 1961-1990 baseline. Over broader timeframes, the continent's 3-month anomaly stood at +1.69°C, while the 12-month rolling figure reached +1.39°C. In the global cross-region standings, 8 of the 10 warmest 1-month anomalies were concentrated in US states, but African nations claimed two of the top global positions, highlighting severe tropical and sub-Saharan heating.
Hottest & coolest countries
Temperatures varied across member nations, led by extreme anomalies in East and North Africa. South Sudan () was the continent's warmest country with an average temperature anomaly of +5.19°C, placing it 4th overall in global rankings. Sudan () followed as the 2nd warmest African nation at +4.03°C, while Morocco () registered a +3.01°C departure during its record-setting month. Conversely, Eswatini () was the coolest member relative to historical norms, recording a modest anomaly of +0.28°C.
What's driving change?
The continental warmth is heavily influenced by equatorial ocean activity and local atmospheric feedbacks. A strong El Niño is active in the Pacific Ocean, with the Relative Niño Index at +1.69°C and official forecasts projecting a 100% probability of reaching Very Strong intensity in Sep-Nov (ENSO). Across northern Africa, and persistent Saharan air flows trapped hot air over land, while exacerbated temperature extremes across the Sahel where recent rainfall deficits diminished evaporative cooling. In addition, a positive Indian Ocean Dipole has interacted with , shifting tropical rainfall belts and maintaining prolonged dry spells over eastern sub-Saharan regions.
Looking ahead
Seasonal climate forecasts from international meteorological agencies indicate that above-normal temperatures and erratic precipitation patterns are likely to continue across much of eastern and northern Africa over the next 1-3 months.
Precipitation, Sunshine, Frost and Snow are converted to standard deviations from their own average so they can share an axis with Temperature anomalies.
Metric
Insight
Temperature
10-Yr AverageActual Year
Climate History
77 of 77 events
1912Volcanic
Novarupta (Katmai) eruption
The largest volcanic eruption anywhere in the world in the 20th century - 13 km3 of magma, about thirty times the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption - at Novarupta in Alaska on 6-8 June 1912. Ash reached 100,000 ft and cooled the Northern Hemisphere by roughly 0.3°C over 1912-13. Unlike a tropical eruption such as Pinatubo, a high-latitude eruption's haze stays in its own hemisphere, so it did little to the Southern Hemisphere.
After the Second World War, coal and oil use grew rapidly across Europe, North America and the Soviet Union. Global sulphur dioxide emissions rose from about 30 to about 130 million tonnes a year by 1980, and the sulphate haze they formed masked part of the greenhouse warming underneath - the effect known as 'global dimming'.
One of the strongest La Niñas since instrument-based ENSO records begin in 1950, and part of a run of cool Pacific years through the mid-1950s. La Niña cools global temperatures slightly for a year or two while it lasts, and shifts rainfall patterns worldwide.
Charles David Keeling begins continuous measurements of atmospheric CO₂ at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, starting at about 315 ppm. The record has risen every year since and is now the longest unbroken direct measurement of CO₂ anywhere - the 'Keeling Curve'.
The West African Sahel drought begins abruptly (1969-70), rainfall dropping by up to 40%, severe enough to register in global land-precipitation records.
One of the strongest El Niños on record. It contributed to failed grain harvests in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in 1972, and to a sharp rise in world food prices - an early sign of how far ENSO's reach extends.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Pacific sea temperatures - switches from its cool to its warm phase in 1976-77. The change was abrupt enough to be called the 1976-77 Pacific Climate Shift: it warmed Alaska and the west coast of North America, and reorganised North Pacific fisheries.
Global sulphur dioxide emissions peak at about 130 million tonnes a year, then begin a long decline as Europe, North America and Japan clean up their air. As the aerosol mask thins, the rate of global warming picks up through the 1980s.
Years of drought in the Ethiopian highlands, where most of the Nile's water comes from, drained Lake Nasser behind the Aswan High Dam from about 171 m in 1980 to a record low of 150.6 m in July 1988. The dam's electricity output fell, and had the drought lasted two more years Egypt's irrigation reserve would have run out.
A sulphur-rich eruption in Mexico whose aerosol cloud stayed in the stratosphere for more than two years, cooling the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.2°C.
The strongest El Niño since 1950 on NOAA's Relative Oceanic Niño Index, which strips out the background warming of the tropical oceans before ranking events. On the older index that leaves that warming in, 2015-16 comes out on top instead.
During the strong 1982-83 El Niño the rains failed across the cocoa belt of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. Bushfires in early 1983 destroyed thousands of hectares of cocoa, food crops and forest, bringing famine to Ghana, and the lakes behind the region's hydropower dams fell so low that electricity was cut across Ghana and its neighbours.
Failed rains across northern Ethiopia, compounded by civil war, led to the worst famine the country had seen in a century. It affected 7.75 million people, and estimates of the dead run from 300,000 to 1.2 million - the UN figure is about 1 million.
British Antarctic Survey scientists Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jon Shanklin publish their Halley and Faraday measurements on 16 May 1985, showing October ozone over Antarctica had fallen to about two-thirds of earlier decades. The cause is traced to chlorofluorocarbons, and the finding triggers the fastest international environmental response on record.
Signed in 1987 to phase out ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, the Montreal Protocol turned out to be one of the most consequential climate treaties ever agreed. CFCs are potent greenhouse gases in their own right, and NOAA estimates the Protocol prevented up to 2°C of warming by 2100 - around 1°C from the emissions avoided, and up to 1°C more by sparing forests and other carbon sinks from increased ultraviolet radiation.
Atmospheric CO₂ passes 350 ppm. In the same year James Hansen told a US Senate committee that global warming was already detectable, the moment it entered mainstream politics. Twenty years later, in 2008, Hansen proposed 350 ppm as the safe upper limit - a level the world had already left behind.
One of the strongest La Niñas on record, arriving straight after the 1986-87 El Niño - a swing from one extreme of the Pacific cycle to the other in barely a year.
Daytime warming catches up with the night-led pattern
Across 1961-90, 81% of the world's land saw nights warming faster than days. Across 1991-2020 the pattern reversed: 70% saw days warming faster, as the industrial haze that had been dimming daytime sunshine was cleaned up. The study compares two fixed thirty-year windows; measured as a turning point, this site's own global series turns around 1982.
Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupts in June 1991, the largest eruption since 1912. Its sulphate haze cooled global surface temperature by about 0.5°C in 1992 and reduced rainfall over land for about two years, before the warming trend resumed.
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Atlantic sea temperatures, roughly 60-70 years long - flips to its warm phase in 1995. Warm phases are linked to more active Atlantic hurricane seasons, wetter summers in parts of north-west Europe and more frequent drought in the central and western United States.
One of the strongest El Niños on record, and the one the textbook El Niño pattern is usually drawn from. It pushed 1998 to what was then the warmest year ever measured, and set off the first global-scale coral bleaching event.
From late October 1997 to January 1998, torrential rains brought East Africa its worst flooding since 1961. The 1997-98 El Niño coincided with an extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole - by NOAA's Dipole Mode Index, September-November 1997 is the strongest positive IOD season since 1871. Floods and the disease outbreaks that followed, including Rift Valley fever, killed thousands.
A strong La Niña that ran for three winters after the record 1997-98 El Niño, peaking at an ONI of -1.53. It pulled global temperatures back below 1998's record for several years, and brought the usual La Niña pattern of dry winters across the southern United States and wet years in Australia and Indonesia.
Pacific Decadal Oscillation flips back to a cool phase
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Pacific sea temperatures - flips back to its cool phase around 1998-99. The cool phase that followed is one reason global surface warming appeared to slow in the 2000s, as more heat went into the deep Pacific.
A moderate-to-strong El Niño that peaked around the turn of 2009-10. It helped make 2010 one of the warmest years on record at the time, and was followed straight away by the strong La Niña of 2010-12.
On 1 September 2009, 263 mm of rain fell on Ouagadougou in about 12 hours - a national record in 115 years of measurement, more than 100 mm above the previous highest. More than 150,000 people in and around the capital were affected, about two-thirds of them left homeless, and some 24,000 houses were destroyed.
Globally, heatwave days have roughly doubled each decade since 2010 - from an average of 5.3 a year in the 2000s to 11.5 in the 2010s and 18.9 so far in the 2020s, weighted by land area across 169 countries. El Niño has not become more extreme. The whole temperature distribution has shifted upwards, so the same natural El Niño and La Niña cycle now pushes far more days over fixed extreme-heat thresholds.
A strong double-winter La Niña peaking at an ONI of -1.57. It gave Australia its wettest two years on record and the Queensland floods of 2010-11 - so much rain fell on land that global sea level briefly dropped in 2011 - and it fed drought in the Horn of Africa and in Texas.
The October-December 2010 short rains failed across the Horn of Africa during La Niña and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole, and the 2011 long rains failed too - one of the region's worst droughts in decades. On 20 July 2011 the UN declared famine in parts of southern Somalia, and a later FSNAU / FEWS NET study estimated that about 258,000 people died in Somalia between October 2010 and April 2012, half of them children under five.
On 1 March 2010, after months of heavy rain, a landslide on the slopes of Mount Elgon buried three villages in Bududa district in eastern Uganda. Dozens of bodies were recovered and around 300 people were never found; some 5,000 were displaced, on slopes already stripped of forest.
The record heat of 2010 across the Middle East and North Africa
Record heatwaves across south-west Asia, the Middle East and northern Africa left large areas 2-3°C warmer than average for the whole of 2010. Israel had its hottest year by a wide margin, and Turkey and Tunisia their warmest on record.
Heavy rains from July 2012, and water released from dams upstream, sent the Niger and Benue rivers into the worst flooding Nigeria had seen in decades. By November 363 people had died and more than 2.1 million had been displaced.
Atmospheric CO₂ passes 400 ppm at Mauna Loa on 9 May 2013 - a level the planet had not seen for 3-5 million years, since the Pliocene, when sea levels were many metres higher.
The strongest El Niño on record by raw ONI - though on NOAA's newer RONI index, which strips out background tropical-ocean warming, 1982-83 ranks slightly ahead instead. 2016 became the hottest year on record at that time (+1.0°C above pre-industrial).
The eleven warmest years ever measured are 2015 through 2025, an unbroken run - the longest sustained stretch of record warmth in the 176-year instrumental record. 2023 and 2024 each broke the previous record in turn.
On the night of 3 June 2015 torrential rain flooded central Accra. People sheltering from the water at a petrol station near Kwame Nkrumah Circle were caught when leaking fuel spread across the floodwater and ignited; the explosion and floods together killed about 150 people. President Akufo-Addo later called it the darkest day in Accra's history.
The very strong 2015-16 El Niño brought southern Africa its worst drought in 35 years and a second failed harvest in a row. Food crop production fell by up to two-thirds in some countries, leaving millions in need of food aid.
Three dry winters in a row, 2015 to 2017, brought Cape Town within weeks of 'Day Zero' in early 2018 - the day the city's taps would have been turned off. Attribution studies found climate change made a drought like this three to six times more likely.
After three days of torrential rain, part of Sugar Loaf mountain above Regent, on the edge of Freetown, collapsed before dawn on 14 August 2017. The mudslide and floods killed about 1,141 people, many asleep in their homes, and left more than 3,000 homeless; deforestation and unregulated building on the slopes made it worse.
From 2018 Morocco had its longest run of dry years on record, with rainfall about 35% below normal on average. By early 2024 the dams were on average less than a quarter full, and Al Massira, the country's second-largest reservoir, was down to about 1%, forcing cuts to irrigation and a push to desalination. The heat made it worse: 2023 is Morocco's warmest year in this site's 1950-2025 record.
East Africa's floods and the extreme positive IOD, 2019
In 2019 the Indian Ocean Dipole swung to one of its strongest positive phases on record while the Pacific was ENSO-neutral - by NOAA's Dipole Mode Index, September-November 2019 is the second-strongest positive IOD season since 1871, after 1997. East Africa's October-December short rains were among the wettest on record, with widespread flooding.
Heavy rains in October 2019 sent the Ubangi River over its banks through Bangui, the capital, plunging large parts of the city under water. More than 100,000 people were affected in Bangui and the provinces, with thousands displaced, in a country already stretched by years of conflict.
From October 2019 heavy rains flooded the Likouala, Cuvette, Plateaux and Sangha departments along the Congo and Oubangui rivers, destroying homes, fields and fishing grounds. The government declared a state of natural disaster in November; at least 170,000 people were affected in the three worst-hit departments alone, among them about 30,000 refugees.
Cyclone Idai came ashore at Beira, Mozambique, on the night of 14-15 March 2019, and its winds and floods killed more than 1,000 people across Mozambique (602), Zimbabwe (344) and Malawi (at least 59). More than two million people were affected - one of the deadliest tropical cyclones on record in the southern hemisphere.
Between 21 and 24 November 2019 almost 300 mm of rain fell on Djibouti city - more than three times its annual average, with two years' rain falling in a single day at the peak. The floods affected about 250,000 people, a quarter of the country's population, and around ten people were killed.
On 19 July 2019 an extremely heavy downpour caused flash floods across Montserrado, Grand Cape Mount, Margibi, Bomi and Lofa counties, flooding many communities around Monrovia. Liberia's National Disaster Management Authority put the number affected at about 25,000; two people drowned and at least 187 homes were damaged.
Heavy rain over the Lake Victoria basin from late 2019, driven by El Niño and a strongly positive Indian Ocean Dipole, swelled the Nile and flooded South Sudan's Sudd for four years running. By 2022 about 70% of Unity State was under water - the worst floods in 60 years - and nearly a million people were affected, with Bentiu surviving as an island behind earth dykes.
After poor rains from 2019, the failure of the November 2020 to January 2021 rains left southern Angola in its worst drought in 40 years. More than 1.3 million people in Cunene, Huíla and Namibe faced severe hunger, crops and pasture failed, and thousands crossed into Namibia in search of food.
By 2023 Tunisia was in the fifth year of a drought, and none of its 30-odd dams was even a third full, some down to 17%. From the end of March the government cut off drinking water at night in parts of the country and banned its use for farming, washing cars and watering gardens.
Global fossil CO₂ emissions fell about 5.8% in 2020, from 37.0 to 34.8 billion tonnes, yet atmospheric CO₂ still rose 2.5 ppm - the dip barely registers in the atmospheric record. Emissions were back to pre-pandemic levels by 2022.
New international shipping rules cut the sulphur allowed in ship fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% almost overnight, removing about 8 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year. With less sulphate haze over the oceans, it may have added around 0.1°C of warming by 2023-24.
Three consecutive La Niña winters - a 'triple dip', which has happened only a handful of times since 1950 - peaking at an ONI of -1.11. It held global temperatures slightly below where the warming trend would otherwise have put them, and coincided with five failed rainy seasons in a row in the Horn of Africa and severe flooding in eastern Australia in 2022.
The 2020 rainy season was far wetter than the 1981-2020 average across the whole of Guinea-Bissau, and Bissau recorded its highest annual rainfall on record. July to September brought an unusual number of days with more than 50 mm of rain, and floods and strong winds damaged homes, roads and farmland in towns across the country.
From late 2020, five rainy seasons in a row failed across Somalia, southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya - something never seen before - during the long 2020-23 La Niña. It was the region's worst drought in 40 years, and by 2023 about 32 million people needed urgent help. Attribution studies found climate change made it about 100 times more likely.
Rain from late 2019 into 2020, during a strongly positive Indian Ocean Dipole, raised Lake Victoria to 13.42 m on 7 May 2020, beating the record of 13.41 m set in 1964. Shoreline and island communities flooded, and more than 200,000 people were displaced across Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
In September 2020 the Blue Nile rose to 17.57 metres at Khartoum, its highest level since measurements began in 1912 and above the historic 1988 flood. Floods across Sudan affected more than 3 million people, destroyed over 100,000 homes and killed more than 100.
Southern Madagascar had its worst drought in 40 years in 2020-21, after several failed rainy seasons. More than 1.1 million people needed emergency food aid, and for the first time the country recorded pockets of 'catastrophe' - the most severe level of hunger on the international scale.
Lake Tanganyika has been rising since 2020, and on 23 April 2024, after heavy El Niño rains, it reached a record 777.2 m, above its 1964 flood peak. Water spread into lakeside districts of Bujumbura and other towns; more than 200,000 people in Burundi were affected by floods and nearly 100,000 displaced.
In August 2021, during an intense heatwave, more than 70 fires broke out across 13 provinces of northern Algeria, worst of all in the mountains of Kabylie around Tizi Ouzou. They killed 90 people, including 33 soldiers trapped while fighting the flames. 2021 is Algeria's 2nd-warmest year in this site's 1950-2025 record.
On 30-31 July 2022 about 276 mm of rain fell at Banjul's airport in Yundum, bringing The Gambia some of its worst flash floods in nearly half a century. Homes, roads and farms across the greater Banjul area flooded and thousands of people were displaced.
Torrential rain on 12-13 December 2022 sent floods and landslides through the hillside districts of Kinshasa, leaving roads and whole neighbourhoods under water or destroyed. At least 169 people died, many of them buried by landslides.
Overnight on 20-21 October 2022 heavy rain triggered a landslide in the PK8 district of Libreville that buried a house, killing seven members of one family, aged 7 to 50.
The 2022 rainy season brought Nigeria its worst floods since 2012, with the Niger and Benue rising higher than they had then. The national emergency agency counted 662 deaths and about 2.4 million people displaced, and large areas of farmland were lost.
A strong El Niño arriving on top of long-term greenhouse warming, with the cut in shipping sulphur from the 2020 fuel rule adding a little more. Together they produced the record global temperatures of 2023 and 2024.
Storm Daniel came ashore near Benghazi on 10 September 2023 with extreme rain, and that night two dams above Derna gave way, sending about 30 million cubic metres of water through the city. Official figures record 4,540 deaths and 3,297 missing; other counts put the dead above 5,900.
On 2-3 December 2023, during the heavy rains of an El Niño year, debris flows poured off Mount Hanang into the towns of Katesh and Gendabi in northern Tanzania. At least 89 people died and about 5,600 were left homeless.
On 4 May 2023 torrential rain in the hills above Lake Kivu sent floods and landslides through the villages of Bushushu and Nyamukubi in South Kivu. More than 400 people were killed, thousands were reported missing, and some 3,000 households lost their homes.
On 2-3 May 2023 torrential rain brought flash floods and landslides to western and northern Rwanda, worst in Rubavu, Ngororero, Nyabihu, Rutsiro and Karongi. 131 people died and more than 5,000 houses were destroyed - one of the deadliest disasters in the country's recent history.
Exceptionally heavy October-December rains flooded southern Somalia, eastern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, which were only just emerging from the 2020-23 drought. More than 300 people died and over a million were displaced in Kenya and Somalia alone. El Niño was blamed at the time, but a World Weather Attribution study found a strongly positive Indian Ocean Dipole - by NOAA's index the third-strongest September-November since 1871 - and climate change each made a similar contribution, together roughly doubling the rainfall, with no significant role for ENSO.
Unusually heavy rains in 2024 brought floods to much of West and Central Africa, in places the worst in 30 years. About 4 million people were affected - 1.9 million in Chad, 1.3 million in Niger and 1.2 million in Nigeria - at least 1,500 died and more than 600,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
In October 2024 the Senegal River and its tributaries rose after heavy late rains and water released from the Manantali and Falémé dams upstream in Mali, flooding riverside villages around Bakel, Matam and Podor. At least 55,600 people in 51 villages were affected and more than 1,000 hectares of crops were damaged.
The 2023-24 El Niño brought southern Africa its worst mid-season dry spell in more than a century. Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe declared national disasters; harvests failed across the region, and more than 27 million people were affected in its worst hunger crisis in decades.
On 2 August 2025 more than nine hours of intense rain flooded the whole of Luba, capital of Bioko Sur, cutting its access roads; parts of Malabo were also flooded. The Red Cross reported more than 200 families severely affected and four people injured, and noted that no similar flood had hit the area before.
Warm Spell Duration Index (WSDI) - days in a 6+ day run above the local 90th-percentile temperature for that time of year. Equal-weight mean across 15 countries.
Heatwave days per year2024 (Record)10-yr avg
Data: World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal (ERA5-derived), aggregated by 4BYO across member countries. Refreshed roughly 1-2x/year, ~7-8 months behind present.
Source: Copernicus ERA5 (countries) · NOAA Climate at a Glance (continents, US states & climate regions) · Met Office (UK) · GPCC (rainfall, snow) · World Bank CCKP (frost). Anomalies are vs the 1961–1990 baseline. See methodology.
4byo continent aggregate · equal-weight mean of member country monthly absolute temperatures (OWID/CRU TS); precipitation: GPCC (DWD). - Anomalies vs 1901-2000 mean
Africa doesn't have a warm/cold cycle - its monthly temperature range is only 4.7°C across the year - but it does have a strong wet/dry cycle (the wettest month gets 2× as much rain as the driest). So we track how the wet season has shifted instead.
Shifting wet season
4 Days Longer
Wet Season
1891–1920 Baseline: 6 Apr → 2 Oct · 179 days
2016–2025 Now: 8 Apr → 7 Oct · 183 days
+2d+5d
JanJFebFMarMAprAMayMJunJJulJAugASepSOctONovNDecD
Onset 2 Days LaterEnd 5 Days Later
-6.1% annual rain
baseline avgrecent avgClickTap for decades
Wet-season onset
6 Apr→8 Apr
2 Days Later
When 25% of annual rain has fallen
Wet-season end
2 Oct→7 Oct
5 Days Later
When 75% of annual rain has fallen
Peak-rain month
Apr→Apr
Unchanged
Wet months: 7 → 5
1891–19202016–2025Wet-month threshold (65 mm)
Monthly precipitation climatology. A “wet month” exceeds the baseline monthly mean (dashed gold line). Biggest month-to-month shift: Apr (-9 mm, -11%).
4byo continent aggregate · OWID/CRU TS country monthly temperatures & precipitation: GPCC (DWD). Baseline: first 30 yrs on record. Recent: last 10 yrs on record.
Live GDACS alerts in Africa - Red (Major), Orange (Severe) or Green (Moderate) - and the long-term record of weather and climate disasters.
Live Alerts
Loading…
Alerts, Last 12 Months
Major
1
1.8 a year since 2021
Severe
9
9.8 a year since 2021
Moderate
4,344
Weather Disasters, 2025
Disasters
65
72 a year, 2016-2025
Deaths
2,868
3,929 a year, 2016-2025
Weather Disasters, 2016-2025
Most Frequent
Flood
412 of 716 disasters
Deadliest
Storms & Cyclones
17,479 of 39,285 deaths
Disasters: EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, via Our World in Data - 10+ deaths, 100+ people affected, or a declared emergency or call for international help. Alerts: GDACS.
The natural climate patterns that measurably shape seasonal temperature or rainfall in Africa, from this site’s own data since 1950 - long-term trends removed, and ENSO’s share taken out before scoring the others, so each is credited only for what it adds.
El Niño / La Niña (ENSO)moderate link
The tropical Pacific’s warm and cool swings - the biggest natural driver of year-to-year climate.
Now: El Niño (strong) · RONI +1.7°C(Jul-Sep 2026)
Forecast - 100% very strong at peak, Sep-Nov, then neutral by Apr-Jun 2027 (NOAA). La Niña from Sep 2027 in SNU’s AI model.
A moderate or strong link for 53% of the places in this group.
Every figure on this page is sourced from official, openly published climate datasets. Anomalies are calculated against the 1961–1990 baseline (temperature) and 1991–2020 (rainfall, sunshine, frost) - see the Methodology & Sources page for the complete dataset list and update calendar.
Africa is warming in line with the rest of the world. The page above shows the latest monthly temperature anomaly versus the 1961-1990 baseline, the long-term annual trend, and the region's rank in the historical record. The headline panel also shows the long-term trend rate per decade and the warmest and coolest years on file.
Which climate drivers affect the weather in Africa?
Measured from seasonal temperature and rainfall in Africa since 1950, with the long-term warming trend removed (and ENSO's own share removed before scoring the other drivers), the climate drivers with a clear effect here are: El Niño / La Niña (ENSO) - a moderate or strong link for 53% of the places in this group; the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) - a moderate or strong link for 100% of the places in this group; the Arctic Oscillation (AO) - a moderate or strong link for 100% of the places in this group; the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) - a moderate or strong link for 62% of the places in this group. Their current state is shown in the Climate Drivers section of this page.
What extreme weather affects Africa?
In 2025, the latest complete year, the international disaster database EM-DAT recorded 65 weather and climate disasters in Africa, against an average of 72 a year in 2016-2025, with 2,868 deaths. Over those ten years the most frequent type was flood (412 of 716) and the deadliest storms & cyclones. GDACS, the UN and European Commission's disaster alert system, issued 1 Major (Red) and 9 Severe (Orange) alerts for Africa in the last 12 months. Live alerts are on this page and on the Extreme Weather tracker.
Where does the climate data for Africa come from?
Climate data for Africa comes from Our World in Data, sourcing Copernicus ERA5 and HadCRUT5 (national temperature anomaly) and the Global Carbon Project via Our World in Data (CO₂ emissions), refreshed every month, when the upstream temperature and rainfall data are refreshed.
What is the climate baseline used on this page?
Anomalies on this page are calculated against the 1961-1990 climatological baseline, which is the standard reference period used by the Met Office, NOAA, IPCC and most national climate services. Some panels also show the source-native 1901-2000 (NOAA) or 1991-2020 (WMO) baselines for verification. See Methodology & Sources for the full reference.
Which areas does the Africa climate data cover?
The Africa climate profile covers Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa and surrounding areas. Continental temperature trends from NOAA Climate at a Glance
How often is the Africa climate update refreshed?
The Africa climate update is refreshed monthly, typically a few days after the previous month closes and the upstream provider (Met Office HadUK-Grid, NOAA Climate at a Glance, Copernicus ERA5 or the Global Carbon Project) publishes its update. See the Climate Rankings for cross-region comparisons.
What counts as a Heatwave Day on the Africa climate page?
Heatwave Days use the Warm Spell Duration Index (WSDI) - the WMO/ETCCDI-standard heatwave measure: days that are part of a run of 6 or more consecutive days above the local 90th-percentile temperature for that calendar day. The 90th-percentile threshold varies by time of year (a hot day in January is judged differently to one in July) but is fixed to the 1961-1990 baseline for every year shown - it does not shift as the climate warms, which is why Heatwave Days trend upward over time.
Does the Africa climate page include frost and snow data?
Yes. Frost Days (days with a minimum temperature below 0°C, World Bank CCKP) and snow water-equivalent (GPCC) are shown alongside temperature and precipitation, each measured against the 1961-1990 baseline where a like-for-like historical comparison is available.
What major climate events has Africa experienced?
Major climate events in Africa include The Nile drought and Lake Nasser, 1979-88; The Bududa landslide, 2010; The Freetown mudslide, 2017; The Djibouti floods, 2019; The Horn of Africa drought, 2020-23; The Gambia's floods, 2022; The Kalehe floods, 2023; The Luba floods, 2025. The Climate History panel on this page lists 77 sourced events and pattern shifts relevant to Africa, the earliest from 1912 - 43 about Africa itself and the rest global context such as volcanic eruptions and El Niño events. Each entry carries its own sources and can be searched, filtered to local events or by category, and sorted by date; scrolling the list moves a cursor across the chart above so you can see where each event falls in the record.
Where does the Climate History list for Africa come from, and how is it checked?
It is a hand-reviewed register, not an automatic feed. Every entry is sourced, and each one records how it was verified - against this site's own data series, against a peer-reviewed paper, or against the public record of the event. The rest give global or national context shared with wider pages. Where a figure is narrower than it first appears, or a famous claim does not hold locally, the entry says so.
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