Climate risk in Kirkuk
Iraq
Main risks in Kirkuk
On heat and earthquakes, Kirkuk ranks above at least 87% of the world's 626 large cities.
- Heat
- up to 48.4 °C in 2025 [1]
- Higher than 99% of the world's large cities; 5th of 5 large cities in Iraq.
- For comparison: Riyadh 46.3 °C, Lahore 45.9 °C, Khartoum 45.5 °C.
- Earthquakes
- very strong shaking on firm ground (0.27 g), more on soft ground [2]
- Higher than 87% of the world's large cities; 1st of 4 large cities in Iraq.
- For comparison: Chittagong 0.3 g, Guadalajara 0.29 g, Jakarta 0.28 g.
- g is the pull of gravity: from about 0.1 g, shaking is strong and can cause light damage to buildings.
48.4 °C Natural Earth Hottest day of 2025
This week in Kirkuk
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 Kirkuk stands out
1%
Land burned in an average year [6]
Higher than 84% of the world's large cities; 1st of 5 large cities in Iraq.
For comparison: Xi'an 4%, Johannesburg 2%.
+2.5 °C
Warming by 2050, if emissions level off [7]
Higher than 84% of the world's large cities; 4th of 5 large cities in Iraq.
For comparison: Moscow +2.6 °C, Xi'an +2.4 °C, Riyadh +2.4 °C.
extremely high
Water stress [8]
The top grade of its scale, shared by 30% of the world's large cities.
Around the city on the map
Earthquakes
Natural Earth Earthquake shaking on firm ground, 10% chance in 50 years
Water stress
Natural Earth Kirkuk's climate in the 2050s
2041-2060 compared with 1991-2020, if emissions level off [9] [7]
By the 2050s, Kirkuk's climate will be unlike any large city's today, its own included; of the other cities, Karbala (Iraq) comes closest.
+1.9 °C
Mean temperature over the year
+2.5 °C
Average daily high, warmest month
+1.0 °C
Average nightly low, coldest month
-5%
Precipitation over the year
If emissions keep rising, it will differ even more from the climate of every large city today.
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 Karbala. [10]
Everything else measured
From the highest among the world's 626 large cities to the lowest.
| Reading | Kirkuk | Among 626 large cities | Rank in Iraq (1 = highest) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hot days in 2025, over 35 °C [1] | 136 days | higher than 95% of large cities | Rank in Iraq (1 = highest): 5 of 5 |
| Tropical nights in 2025, over 20 °C [1] | 136 nights | higher than 60% of large cities | Rank in Iraq (1 = highest): 5 of 5 |
| Drought risk [8] | High | the same grade as 44% of large cities; higher than 50%, lower than 6% | |
| Days with 20 mm of rain or more in 2025 [1] | 5 days | higher than 33% of large cities | Rank in Iraq (1 = highest): 1 of 5 |
| River flood depth, 100-year event [11] | Dry at the centre; other districts can flood | like 85% of large cities | |
| Share of land sinking over 1 cm a year, within 15 km [12] | 0% | like 80% of large cities | |
| Tropical cyclone wind, once in 100 years [13] | 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 [11] | Far from the sea: no coastal flooding |
- Flood depth is given for one 1 km square at the city centre, in today's climate.
- 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.
- 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.
Large cities in Iraq
Sources
- ERA5 Single Levels Daily Statistics: hottest day, hot days, nights, heavy rain
- GSHAP Global Seismic Hazard Map: earthquake shaking
- 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
- Global Biomass Burning at 500 m (GFED500): burned land
- NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX-GDDP-CMIP6): warming, the 2050s comparison
- Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Framework: water stress, drought risk
- 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
- Aqueduct Floods Hazard Maps: river flood depth, coastal floods
- Global Land Subsidence Mapping Reveals Widespread Loss of Aquifer Storage Capacity: sinking land
- IRIS: the Imperial College Storm Model dataset: tropical cyclone wind
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In a line
Source: Criora (criora.com), based on ECMWF, GSHAP, ECCC, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) global forecasts, NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), GFED500, NEX-GDDP-CMIP6, WRI, TerraClimate, HydroShare, IRIS
APA
Criora. (2026). Kirkuk, Iraq: climate risk profile [Data set]. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://criora.com/atlas/IRQ/kirkuk BibTeX
@misc{criora_atlas_IRQ_kirkuk_2026,
author = {{Criora}},
title = {Kirkuk, Iraq: climate risk profile},
year = {2026},
url = {https://criora.com/atlas/IRQ/kirkuk},
urldate = {2026-11-04}
} The figures may be reused on the terms of their sources, which this page names.
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