🇰🇪Kenya

Kenya spans roughly 5°N–5°S, an East African country covering approximately 580,367 km² straddling the equator with a roughly 500 km Indian Ocean coastline including Mombasa and Lamu, featuring dramatic topography that includes the Indian Ocean coastal lowland, the Tsavo savanna, the Great Rift Valley with its lakes such as the freshwater Naivasha and the alkaline Magadi, Nakuru, Bogoria, and Turkana which is the world's largest alkaline lake, the Central and Western Highlands rising on either side of the Rift, the iconic Mount Kenya at 5,199 m as the country's highest peak and Africa's second-highest, and the arid northern badlands. This produces an exceptional climate spectrum: tropical wet-and-dry climates on the coast and in the savanna lowlands, hot semi-arid (BSh) and hot desert (BWh) in the north around Turkana and Mandera, subtropical highland (Cwb / Cfb) on the central highlands including Nairobi at 1,795 m, and alpine conditions on Mount Kenya with active glaciers.

Nairobi at about 1,600–1,800 m sees July highs of 22–24°C with nights of 9–12°C and February highs of about 27°C, with about 750 mm annual rainfall divided between long rains (March–May) and short rains (October–December); Mombasa records highs of 28–33°C with 1,070 mm; Lodwar highs of 34–38°C with 210 mm; Mount Kenya's glaciers, including Lewis Glacier, keep retreating, with only about 10% of their 1980s area left. Major events include multi-year droughts in 2010–11, 2016–17, and 2020–23 causing food insecurity and livestock losses, April–May 2024 floods with over 200 lives lost, Lake Victoria flooding, and coral bleaching at Watamu and Malindi.

Our archive covers 29 Kenyan cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940. The hottest July afternoons are in Mandera, with average highs around 32.4°C, while Limuru has the coldest January nights, with average lows near 9.5°C. Comparing the last decade against the 1940–1970 baseline, mean temperatures across these cities have risen by about 1.5°C.