Climate risk in Karbala
Iraq
Main risks in Karbala
On heat and river floods, Karbala ranks above at least 98% of the world's 626 large cities.
- Heat
- up to 49.1 °C in 2025 [1]
- Higher than 99% of the world's large cities; 4th of 5 large cities in Iraq.
- For comparison: Riyadh 46.3 °C, Lahore 45.9 °C, Khartoum 45.5 °C.
- River floods
- up to 2.2 m of water at the centre in a 100-year flood [2]
- Higher than 98% of the world's large cities; 2nd of 5 large cities in Iraq.
- For comparison: Omdurman 3.2 m, Lagos 1.3 m, Ghaziabad 1.2 m.
49.1 °C Natural Earth Hottest day of 2025
This week in Karbala
This week's forecast risk around the city, by day and by hour, and the hazard events near it now. [3] [4] [5]
This week's forecast for the city cannot be shown here right now.
Open the city on the mapThe 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 mapWhere else Karbala stands out
Around the city on the map
River floods
Natural Earth River flood depth, 100-year event
Water stress
Natural Earth Karbala's climate in the 2050s
2041-2060 compared with 1991-2020, if emissions level off [8] [6]
By the 2050s, Karbala's climate comes closest to that of Kuwait City (Kuwait) today, though no large city matches it well.
+2.0 °C
Mean temperature over the year
+2.4 °C
Average daily high, warmest month
+1.3 °C
Average nightly low, coldest month
-3%
Precipitation over the year
If emissions keep rising, the comparison comes out the same.
Share this comparison
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.
| Reading | Karbala | Among 626 large cities | Rank in Iraq (1 = highest) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hot days in 2025, over 35 °C [1] | 167 days | higher than 97% of large cities | Rank in Iraq (1 = highest): 3 of 5 |
| Tropical nights in 2025, over 20 °C [1] | 175 nights | higher than 69% of large cities | Rank in Iraq (1 = highest): 3 of 5 |
| 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 [10] | 0% | like 80% of large cities | |
| Land burned in an average year [11] | 0% | like 84% of large cities | |
| Tropical cyclone wind, once in 100 years [12] | No hurricane or typhoon reaches here | ||
| 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] | Far from the sea: no coastal flooding |
- 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.
- Tsunamis and landslides are not rated for a single city here.
Large cities in Iraq
Sources
- ERA5 Single Levels Daily Statistics: hottest day, hot days, nights, heavy rain
- Aqueduct Floods Hazard Maps: river flood depth, coastal floods
- Environment and Climate Change Canada: Global Deterministic Prediction System (GDPS): the week's forecast map
- Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) global forecasts: air pollution near the city now
- NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS): wildfire near the city now
- NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX-GDDP-CMIP6): warming, the 2050s comparison
- Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Framework: water stress
- TerraClimate: the 2050s comparison
- 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
- Global Land Subsidence Mapping Reveals Widespread Loss of Aquifer Storage Capacity: sinking land
- Global Biomass Burning at 500 m (GFED500): burned land
- IRIS: the Imperial College Storm Model dataset: tropical cyclone wind
Cite or embed
Cite this page
In a line
Source: Criora (criora.com), based on ECMWF, WRI, ECCC, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) global forecasts, NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), NEX-GDDP-CMIP6, TerraClimate, HydroShare, GFED500, IRIS
APA
Criora. (2026). Karbala, Iraq: climate risk profile [Data set]. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://criora.com/atlas/IRQ/karbala BibTeX
@misc{criora_atlas_IRQ_karbala_2026,
author = {{Criora}},
title = {Karbala, Iraq: climate risk profile},
year = {2026},
url = {https://criora.com/atlas/IRQ/karbala},
urldate = {2026-11-04}
} The figures may be reused on the terms of their sources, which this page names.
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