🇺🇬Uganda

Uganda (241,038 km²) straddles the equator between about 1°S and 4°N in the African Great Lakes region, at an average elevation of about 900 m above sea level. Its local climates are shaped mainly by elevation, from the lakeshores to the Rwenzori Mountains in the west and Mount Elgon in the east, and by its large lakes.

The climate is tropical. Around Lake Victoria it is Köppen Af, with no true dry season at Kampala or Entebbe, while Gulu in the north and Mbarara in the southwest have a tropical savanna climate (Aw). Most of the country has two rainy seasons, March–May and September–November; the north has a single rainy season from March to November. Altitude keeps temperatures moderate: in Kampala, average highs range from 25 to 29°C and average lows from 16 to 18°C. Lake Victoria, which Uganda shares with Kenya and Tanzania, is the world's second-largest freshwater lake by area.

Most of Uganda receives 1,000–1,500 mm of rain a year. On the shores of Lake Victoria (surface about 1,135 m above sea level) annual totals range from about 1,200 mm at Kampala to about 1,640 mm at Entebbe. In the western Rwenzori Mountains, which rise to 5,109 m at Margherita Peak on Mount Stanley, heavy precipitation above the foothills sustains montane forest, bamboo zones and a cloud-forest flora. The Rwenzori is one of only three mountain areas in Africa that still carry glaciers: they covered about 7.5 km² in 1906 and about 1.5 km² by 2005, and the WMO expects East Africa's glaciers to disappear entirely by the 2040s if current retreat rates continue.

The northeastern Karamoja region is semi-arid, with a single rainy season, and repeated droughts and poor harvests keep it among Uganda's poorest regions. Agriculture employs about 71% of Uganda's workforce and produced 24% of GDP in 2015, with coffee, tea and cotton among the main cash crops, so droughts and floods weigh directly on livelihoods.

Kampala (capital, 0.3°N, about 1,200 m above sea level near Lake Victoria's northern shore) has a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen Af): monthly mean temperatures stay between about 21°C and 23°C all year, and rainfall totals about 1,200 mm a year, peaking in March–May (April is the wettest month, with about 169 mm) and again in October–November.

The severe November 2024 Bulambuli landslides in eastern Uganda killed about 30 people and buried over 100 homes after continuous heavy rainfall, part of a recurring cycle of Mount Elgon-region disasters including the March 2010 Bududa landslide (at least 100 dead), which followed unusually heavy rain, and the October 2018 Bukalasi mudslide in Bududa.

Uganda has experienced repeated hydrological, meteorological, and geological hazards since 2010. Heavy rain in 2020 pushed Lake Victoria to a record high in May, forcing thousands of residents of the lake's islands to evacuate. Storms on the lake are a hazard of their own: intense night-time thunderstorms kill thousands of fishermen on Lake Victoria every year, and under a high-emission scenario extreme rainfall over the lake is projected to increase about twice as much as over the surrounding land.

Our archive covers 23 Ugandan cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940. The hottest July afternoons are in Kasese, with average highs around 28.3°C, while Ibanda has the coldest January nights, with average lows near 15.3°C. Comparing the last decade against the 1940–1970 baseline, mean temperatures across these cities have risen by about 1.7°C.