🇲🇷Mauritania

Mauritania spans 14°43′–27°18′N as a vast (~1,030,700 km²) northwest African country bordering Algeria, Mali, Senegal, and Western Sahara, with a 754 km Atlantic coast. Approximately 75 percent of the country is Saharan desert — the Adrar plateau (Kediet ej Jill at 915 m, the country's highest peak), the Tagant plateau, the great ergs (Erg Igidi, Erg Chech) of dunes, and the iconic Richat Structure (the Eye of the Sahara) in the Adrar.

Thinner Sahel and Sudanian savanna fringes lie in the deep south along the Senegal River. This produces a sharp climate gradient — hot desert (BWh) across the vast central and northern interior, hot semi-arid (BSh) in the southern Sahel, with a thin band of tropical savanna (Aw) along the Senegal River and a unique cool-coast desert (BWh-Bwk transition) on the Atlantic at Nouadhibou where the cold Canary Current produces remarkably temperate temperatures.

Nouakchott on the cool Atlantic coast averages 21°C in January and 28°C in September with 90 mm rainfall — almost entirely in the brief August–September monsoon. Nouadhibou on the Atlantic registers 17°C in January and 26°C in September with 30 mm — extraordinary cool-coast aridity. Atar in the Adrar averages 15°C in January and 38°C in July with 80 mm. Rosso on the Senegal River records 21°C in January and 33°C in May with 290 mm.

Néma in the southern Sahel registers 19°C in January and 35°C in May with 280 mm. The deep Sahara summers regularly exceed 47°C, with Atar and Tidjikja reaching 48°C and above. Major events include the severe Sahel droughts of 1972–73 and 1984–85 that drove urbanization to Nouakchott, recurrent severe Saharan dust storms (the August 2020 dust plume reaching the Caribbean), the severe September 2020 Senegal River floods, intensifying Sahel desertification, the severe April 2024 West African heatwave reaching 48°C in southern Mauritania, accelerating Atlantic upwelling shifts threatening the Nouadhibou fishery, and growing climate-driven migration pressure.

Our archive covers 0 Mauritanian cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940.