THE LAND · HEAT · 2017–26

The heat

Iraq has always had fierce summers. What has changed is how hot they run, and how little the nights now cool — measured every day since 1981 in eight of its cities.

32nights

a year that never cooled below 30 °C, on average across eight cities over the last ten summers (2017–26): 3.3 times as many as in 1981–90, when there were 10. In 2026, Basra had 96.

Every summer since 1981

The afternoon high of June, July and August, averaged over the eight cities. It was 42.8 °C in 1981–90 and 44.3 °C over the last ten summers: 1.5 °C hotter, every day of the summer, on average. The hottest summer in the record was 2024, at 45.3 °C.

43.8 °C · 2026-12-31 · LATEST

The nights that don’t cool

A night counts here when the temperature never fell below 30 °C, from May to September. Basra now has 80 a year, against 28 in 1981–90. The fewest: Erbil, with 8.

Basra1981–90: 2880.2 nights

Najaf1981–90: 1341.5 nights

Karbala1981–90: 1137.0 nights

Baghdad1981–90: 1031.1 nights

Ramadi1981–90: 727.0 nights

Tikrit1981–90: 623.1 nights

Mosul1981–90: 18.7 nights

Erbil1981–90: 28.4 nights

The average over the ten summers 2017–26, each city against its own 1981–90. The map shows every year; pick one in its stripes.

Cooling, on Iraq’s grid

A night that stays above 30 °C brings little relief from the day’s heat, and it is when fans, air conditioners and neighbourhood generators run longest. The power behind them comes from a grid that loses much of what it makes before it reaches anyone. The power story →

HOW THESE NUMBERS ARE MADE

Temperatures — NASA’s POWER service: the daily highest and lowest air temperature two metres above the ground since 1981, from the MERRA-2 reanalysis, which blends weather-station, balloon and satellite readings into one consistent record, and extended to yesterday by NASA’s forecast-system analysis. NASA POWER ↗ Summer highs → Hot nights →
Cities — the cell (about 50 km across) over each city centre; the same eight cities as the air story. A year counts once its hot season, May to September, is complete.
Why not 50 °C days — a cell that size evens out the hottest afternoons, so its peaks sit a degree or two below what a city’s own thermometers record. The desk reads what the record measures well — the summer’s average and the nights — and does not count the hottest days from it.