Climatology
This page presents Eritrea's climate context for the current climatology, 1991-2020, derived from observed, historical data. Information should be used to build a strong understanding of current climate conditions in order to appreciate future climate scenarios and projected change. You can visualize data for the current climatology through spatial variation, the seasonal cycle, or as a time series. Analysis is available for both annual and seasonal data. Data presentation defaults to national-scale aggregation, however sub-national data aggregations can be accessed by clicking within a country, on a sub-national unit. Other historical climatologies can be selected from the Time Period dropdown list.
Observed, historical data is produced by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of University of East Anglia. Data is presented at a 0.5º x 0.5º (50km x 50km) resolution.
The climate of Eritrea ranges from hot and arid adjacent to the Red Sea to temperate in the highlands and sub-humid in isolated micro-catchment area in the eastern escarpment. Most parts of the country (70%) is hot to very hot with mean annual temperature of more than 27°C; about 25% of the country experience warm to mild weather with a mean temperature of about 22°C. The remaining 5% of the country experience a cool climate with a mean annual temperature of less than 19°C. The total annual rainfall increases from the north to south and it varies from less than 200 mm in the northwest lowlands to more than 700 mm in the south-western lowlands. The country is generally mostly arid climate with about 70% of its land area classified as hot and arid and receiving average annual rainfall of less than 350 mm.