🇰🇵North Korea

North Korea spans 37°41′–43°00′N as an East Asian country covering approximately 120,538 km² across the northern half of the Korean peninsula, bordered by China and Russia to the north and South Korea to the south. The landscape is dominated by rugged mountainous terrain including the Hamgyong Mountains in the northeast rising to Paektu volcano at 2,744 m—the country's highest peak and home to the volcanic Heaven Lake—the Rangrim Mountains in the center, and the Nangnim and Taebaek ranges, with lower coastal plains along the East Sea (Sea of Japan) and the West Sea (Yellow Sea).

This topography produces a strong continental climate with humid continental Köppen regimes (Dwa and Dwb) across most of the country, a hot-summer humid subtropical (Cwa) tendency on the southwestern lowlands around Pyongyang and Sariwon, and subarctic (Dwc) conditions in the high northern mountains, modulated by the dry northwestern Asian winter monsoon and the wet southeastern summer monsoon plus typhoons.

Pyongyang averages −5°C in January and 25°C in August with 940 mm annual rainfall concentrated almost entirely from June to September during the southeastern monsoon. Wonsan on the East Sea coast records 0°C in January and 24°C in August with 1,400 mm. Chongjin in the northeast experiences −5°C in January and 22°C in August with 660 mm.

Hyesan in the high north endures −15°C in January and 18°C in August with 600 mm, making it among the coldest inhabited stations on the Korean peninsula. The Mount Paektu summit averages −20°C year-round with deep winter snowpack and Heaven Lake remaining frozen from October to June. The all-time temperature range stretches from approximately −43°C recorded at Chunggangjin in January 1957 to 41.0°C at Pyongyang in July 2018.

Major events include the severe mid-1990s famine compounded by floods and droughts, recurrent severe summer monsoon floods such as the 2007 Sinpyong deluge, the 2012 Hamgyong floods, the August 2020 typhoon-driven inundations, and the August 2024 Yalu River floods, severe winter cold-snaps, the 2018 record-breaking heatwave, and accelerating glacier-free Paektu summit warming amplifying water-supply variability for the lower river basins.

Our archive covers 1 North Korean cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940. The warmest July averages occur in Pyongyang, around 28.3°C, while Pyongyang records the coldest January nights near −10.9°C. Comparing the last decade against the 1940–1970 baseline, mean temperatures across these cities have risen by about 2°C.0°C.