Criora

Climate risk in Basra

Iraq

Main risks in Basra

On heat, river floods and earthquakes, Basra ranks above at least 78% of the world's 626 large cities.

Heat
up to 50.9 °C in 2025 [1]
Higher than 99% of the world's large cities; 2nd of 5 large cities in Iraq.
For comparison: Riyadh 46.3 °C, Lahore 45.9 °C, Khartoum 45.5 °C.
River floods
up to 56 cm of water at the centre in a 100-year flood [2]
Higher than 93% of the world's large cities; 3rd of 5 large cities in Iraq.
For comparison: Jinan 58 cm, Paris 51 cm, Houston 42 cm.
Earthquakes
very strong shaking on firm ground (0.19 g), more on soft ground [3]
Higher than 78% of the world's large cities; 3rd of 4 large cities in Iraq.
For comparison: Lahore 0.23 g, Ankara 0.2 g, Yangon 0.15 g.
g is the pull of gravity: from about 0.1 g, shaking is strong and can cause light damage to buildings.
50.9 °C Natural Earth

Hottest day of 2025

-40 55 °C
See the hottest days around Basra on the live map 

This week in Basra

This week's forecast risk around the city, by day and by hour, and the hazard events near it now. [4] [5] [6]

Open the city on the map

The Earth right now

The Earth's pulse reads the whole world, not this city, so it is the same on every city's page.

Earth's pulse, from 0 to 100. It rises with the number of people in the path of disasters now under way; 90 matches the 2004 tsunami.

Open the live map

Where else Basra stands out

+2.4 °C

Warming by 2050, if emissions level off [7]

Higher than 82% of the world's large cities; 5th of 5 large cities in Iraq.

For comparison: Ankara +2.5 °C, Tehran +2.5 °C, Dalian +2.5 °C.

Around the city on the map

River floods

Natural Earth

River flood depth, 100-year event

0 3 m
See how deep a river flood reaches around Basra on the live map 

Earthquakes

Natural Earth

Earthquake shaking on firm ground, 10% chance in 50 years

0 0.51 g
See the earthquake hazard around Basra on the live map 

Basra's climate in the 2050s

2041-2060 compared with 1991-2020, if emissions level off [8] [7]

By the 2050s, Basra is projected to have the climate that Kuwait City (Kuwait) has today.

Climate risk in Kuwait City 

+1.9 °C

Mean temperature over the year

+2.3 °C

Average daily high, warmest month

+1.4 °C

Average nightly low, coldest month

+8%

Precipitation over the year

If emissions keep rising, the comparison comes out the same.

Share this comparison

WhatsApp Telegram Viber X Facebook https://criora.com/atlas/IRQ/basra?ref=card

Climates are compared on seasonal temperature and rainfall alone, each difference weighed against the city's usual swings from year to year (the method of Mahony et al. 2017); heat waves, the heat of city streets and the rising sea are left out. All 3 estimates from the climate models, the middle one and the two ends of their range, point to Kuwait City. [9]

Everything else measured

From the highest among the world's 626 large cities to the lowest.

Hot days in 2025, over 35 °C [1] 194 days higher than 99% of large cities Rank in Iraq (1 = highest): 1 of 5
Share of the land around the centre (a 10 km square) that a 100-year flood from the sea puts under 0.5 m of water or more [2] 0.5%; 4.7% by 2080 if emissions keep rising higher than 76% of large coastal cities
Tropical nights in 2025, over 20 °C [1] 187 nights higher than 71% of large cities Rank in Iraq (1 = highest): 1 of 5
Water stress [10] Medium-High: 20 to 40% of the available water drawn the same grade as 13% of large cities; higher than 43%, lower than 44%
Sea level rise by 2050 over the 1995-2014 average, if emissions level off [11] 19 cm, 14 cm of it after 2020 higher than 17% of large coastal cities
Days with 20 mm of rain or more in 2025 [1] 0 days like 7% of large cities
Share of land sinking over 1 cm a year, within 15 km [12] 0% like 80% of large cities
Land burned in an average year [13] 0% like 84% of large cities
Tropical cyclone wind, once in 100 years [14] No hurricane or typhoon reaches here like 71% of large cities
  • Land subsidence comes from a model of satellite radar measurements from 2013 to 2019 in 2 km squares, read over all the land within 15 km of the centre rather than at one point.
  • Water stress is the share of the available water drawn every year. Drought risk is how often droughts come, against the area's own usual rain, and how many people and how much farmland they would reach. Both are graded on WRI's own scale.
  • Sea level rise is the IPCC projection for the nearest coast, counted from the 1995-2014 average. It is on a grid about 100 km across and counts the slow rise or fall of the land. "If emissions level off" is the IPCC's SSP2-4.5 scenario.
  • Water stress and drought risk have no rank in the country: they are steps of a scale, and many cities share one.
  • Tsunamis and landslides are not rated for a single city here.

The nearest large cities

Distance from centre to centre.

Large cities in Iraq

Climate risk in Iraq 

Sources

  1. ERA5 Single Levels Daily Statistics: hottest day, hot days, nights, heavy rain
  2. Aqueduct Floods Hazard Maps: river flood depth, coastal floods
  3. GSHAP Global Seismic Hazard Map: earthquake shaking
  4. Environment and Climate Change Canada: Global Deterministic Prediction System (GDPS): the week's forecast map
  5. Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) global forecasts: air pollution near the city now
  6. NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS): wildfire near the city now
  7. NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX-GDDP-CMIP6): warming, the 2050s comparison
  8. TerraClimate: the 2050s comparison
  9. Mahony, Cannon, Wang and Aitken (2017). A closer look at novel climates: new methods and insights at continental to landscape scales. Global Change Biology 23, 3934-3955: how climates are compared
  10. Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Framework: water stress
  11. IPCC AR6 Sea Level Projections: sea level rise
  12. Global Land Subsidence Mapping Reveals Widespread Loss of Aquifer Storage Capacity: sinking land
  13. Global Biomass Burning at 500 m (GFED500): burned land
  14. IRIS: the Imperial College Storm Model dataset: tropical cyclone wind

About these sources 

Cite or embed

Cite this page

In a line

Source: Criora (criora.com), based on ECMWF, WRI, GSHAP, ECCC, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) global forecasts, NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), NEX-GDDP-CMIP6, TerraClimate, IPCC, HydroShare, GFED500, IRIS

APA

Criora. (2026). Basra, Iraq: climate risk profile [Data set]. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://criora.com/atlas/IRQ/basra

BibTeX

@misc{criora_atlas_IRQ_basra_2026,
  author = {{Criora}},
  title = {Basra, Iraq: climate risk profile},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://criora.com/atlas/IRQ/basra},
  urldate = {2026-11-04}
}

The figures may be reused on the terms of their sources, which this page names.

Embed on your site

Free, no account needed. The widget has no script and shows the figures of this page. Keep its link to the source.