Climatology
This page presents Uganda'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. Data for specific coordinates can be downloaded for in the Data Download page.
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.
Uganda’s climate is largely tropical with two rainy seasons per year, March to May and September to December. The northern region, which forms one quarter of the country lies outside the tropical belt, and hence experiences only one rainy season, March to October. The rest of Uganda lies within a relatively humid equatorial climate zones, and the topography, prevailing winds, and lakes and rivers cause large differences in rainfall patterns across the country. It’s location in the tropics and across the equator results in the country’s weather and seasonal being determined by the large-scale Indian Monsoon, Congo air mass, Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) systems. Uganda also experiences the El Nin Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena, which are principal driving forces of intra-annual to inter annual rainfall variability. Overall, Uganda experiences moderate temperatures throughout the year, around 22.8°C, with monthly temperatures ranging between 21.7°C (July) and 23.9°C (February). During this period, total annual average precipitation is 1,197 mm, and mean monthly precipitation of the country varies from 39.6 mm in January to 152.7 mm in April.
Average temperature in Uganda have increased by 1.3°C since the 1960s.
Notably, minimum temperatures have increased 0.5 - 1.2°C for this period with maximum temperatures increasingly by 0.6 – 0.9°C.
Increased average temperatures have been observed at 0.28°C per decade since 1960.
Daily temperature observations since 1960 show significantly increasing trends in the frequency of the number of hot days, and much larger increased trends in the frequency of hot nights.
Precipitation for the country is highly variable, but overall, Uganda has experienced a statistically significant reduction in annual as well as seasonal rainfall.
Seasonal rainfall for March, April, May has been most affected, with decreases of 6.0 mm per month, per decade.
Droughts have increased in Uganda over the past 60 years. Specifically, over the past 20 years, western, northern and north-eastern regions have experienced more frequent and longer-lasting drought conditions.