🇳🇪Niger

Niger lies between latitudes 11° and 24°N as a vast landlocked West African country (approximately 1,267,000 km²) bordering Algeria, Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali. The landscape is dominated by the Saharan north, featuring the Aïr Mountains rising to Mont Bagzane at about 2,000 m (the country's highest peak), the Ténéré Desert, where the iconic Tree of Ténéré stood as the world's loneliest tree until 1973, and the Djado Plateau; the Sahel transition belt across the centre; the Niger River corridor in the southwest; and the Lake Chad shore in the southeast. This produces a sharp climate gradient: hot desert (BWh) covering most of the country in the north, hot semi-arid (BSh) in the central Sahel including Niamey, and a tropical fringe in the extreme south.

Niamey sees highs of 32°C and lows of 17°C in January and highs of 41°C and lows of 28°C in May with 540 mm rainfall almost entirely from the West African monsoon June–September. Maradi records highs of 30°C in January and 40°C in May with 490 mm, Tahoua 31°C and 41°C with 370 mm, Zinder 29°C and 41°C with 410 mm, Agadez at the Aïr foothills 28°C and 41°C with 110 mm, and Bilma in the Ténéré about 28°C and 43°C with only about 13 mm.

The pre-monsoon hot season April–May brings average highs near or above 40°C across central Niger; Bilma reached 48.2°C in June 2010. Major events include the severe Sahel droughts of 1972–73, 1983–84, and 2010 that triggered famines, the August 2020 Niger River floods, the 2024 floods, desert locust outbreaks, desertification, and the long-term shrinking of Lake Chad in the country's southeast corner.

Our archive covers 6 Nigerien cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940. Comparing the last decade against the 1940–1970 baseline, mean temperatures across these cities have risen by about 2°C.