Climate in Africa and the World
Senior 3 · Geography
Climate in Africa and the World
Lesson 2 of 4
25 min
Let's begin
Travel north from the Congo Basin to the Mediterranean and you cross nearly every climate on Earth that is not cold: rain every month in the forest, one long rainy season in the savanna, a few uncertain showers in the Sahel, almost nothing in the Sahara, and then winter rain on the coast of Tunisia. The same sequence, in mirror image, runs south towards the Cape. This lesson names Africa's climate types and reads them from real climate graphs.
Definition
Köppen classification: the most widely used way of grouping climates, devised by Wladimir Köppen. Each climate gets letters: A tropical (every month warmer than 18 °C), B dry, C mild temperate, D cold-winter, E polar. A second letter gives the rainfall pattern, e.g. f = rain all year, w = dry winter, s = dry summer, W = desert, S = semi-arid (steppe).
Figure 3. Climate graphs of four African stations. Drawn by Ganzaa from WMO data.
| Climate (Köppen) | Where | Temperature | Rainfall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equatorial (Af, Am) | Congo Basin, Gabon, coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, eastern Madagascar | Hot all year (about 24–28 °C); very small annual range | Heavy, in every month, often with two peaks; e.g. Makoua 1,642 mm |
| Tropical wet-and-dry, or savanna (Aw) | Belts north and south of the equatorial zone; much of East Africa | Hot; hottest just before the rains; range larger than at the Equator | One rainy season in the summer half of the year, then a long dry season; e.g. Kano 1,149 mm, almost all from May to September |
| Hot semi-arid (BSh) | The Sahel; the edges of the Kalahari; parts of the Horn of Africa | Hot | A short, unreliable rainy season; droughts are common |
| Hot desert (BWh) | Sahara, Namib, much of the Horn of Africa | Very hot summers, warm winters; large daily range | Very little and irregular; e.g. Aswan about 2 mm a year |
| Mediterranean (Cs) | The coasts of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia; the south-western Cape | Hot summers, mild winters | Wet winters, dry summers; e.g. Tunis 486 mm, but only 4 mm in July |
| Tropical highland (Cw, Cf and cooler A climates) | Ethiopian and East African highlands, including Rwanda; the Drakensberg | Mild, because of altitude; e.g. Kigali 21.7 °C at 1,490 m | Depends on the ITCZ: Kigali has two rainy seasons |
| Humid subtropical (Cfa) | The south-east coast of South Africa | Warm to hot summers, mild winters | Rain in all seasons, most in summer |
Worked example 1: why Kano has one rainy season and Makoua has rain all year
Worked example
Worked example 2: identifying a climate from data. A station's coldest month averages 12.3 °C (January) and its warmest 28.7 °C (August). Its yearly rainfall is 485.6 mm, with 68.1 mm in December and 4.4 mm in July. Name the climate type.
(These are the 1991–2020 figures for Tunis.)
Warning
"Hot all year" is not the same as "hottest". Equatorial places are never extremely hot: Makoua's warmest month is only 25.9 °C, because cloud and rain cool the afternoons. The highest temperatures in Africa are in the deserts, under clear skies: Aswan averages 35.1 °C in July.
Tip
Mirror image. Learn the belts once, from the Equator outwards: equatorial → savanna → semi-arid → desert → Mediterranean. Then apply it both northwards (towards Tunis) and southwards (towards Cape Town), and add the highlands as the exception.
Practice
Sources and credits
Figure 3, the worked examples and the practice exercises are written by Ganzaa.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
