🇲🇬Madagascar

Madagascar spans 11°57′–25°36′S as the world's fourth-largest island (approximately 587,041 km²) in the southwestern Indian Ocean off East Africa, separated from mainland Mozambique by the 400 km Mozambique Channel — an evolutionary climate laboratory with extraordinary endemism (lemurs, baobabs, fossa) shaped by 88 million years of isolation.

Topography is dominated by a central highland plateau (Ankaratra, Andringitra) running north–south, the volcanic Tsaratanana massif containing the country's highest peak Maromokotro at 2,876 m, eastern escarpments dropping abruptly to a narrow wet rainforest coast, and the dry spiny west and south sloping toward the Mozambique Channel.

This exceptional topography produces an extraordinary climate spectrum — tropical rainforest (Af) on the wet eastern coast, tropical monsoon (Am) on the central east, humid subtropical (Cwa / Cfa) on the northern plateaus, subtropical highland (Cwb) in Antananarivo and the central plateau, tropical savanna (Aw) on the western lowlands, hot semi-arid (BSh) and even hot desert (BWh) tendencies in the spiny southwest (Tuléar/Toliara), and tundra (ET) tendency at the Tsaratanana summit.

Antananarivo at 1,276 m averages 14°C in July and 21°C in January with 1,400 mm rainfall almost entirely in the austral summer. Toamasina (Tamatave) on the wet east coast averages 22°C in July and 27°C in January with 3,300 mm. Mahajanga (Majunga) on the northwest coast averages 23°C in July and 28°C in January with 1,500 mm.

Toliara (Tuléar) on the dry southwest coast averages 21°C in July and 27°C in January with 350 mm — among the world's driest tropical-latitude towns. Antsiranana (Diego Suarez) in the far north averages 23°C in July and 28°C in January with 1,000 mm. Andringitra peak records −5°C with rare frost.

Major events include the severe Tropical Cyclone Batsirai (February 2022) and Cyclone Freddy (February–March 2023, the longest-lived tropical cyclone on record, killing over 180 people in Madagascar), the severe 2021–22 southern kéré drought-and-famine that the WMO has called the world's first climate-change-driven famine, recurrent severe southwestern Indian Ocean cyclone strikes (Eline 2000, Geralda 1994, Gafilo 2004, Idai 2019), accelerating eastern rainforest deforestation, and severe coral bleaching at Nosy Be and the Mozambique Channel reefs.

Our archive covers 7 Malagasy cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940. The warmest July averages occur in Mahajanga, around 28.9°C, while Antsirabe records the coldest January nights near 15.7°C. Comparing the last decade against the 1940–1970 baseline, mean temperatures across these cities have risen by about 1.2°C.