Climate risk in George Town
Penang, Malaysia
Main risks in George Town
On heavy rain and coastal floods, George Town ranks above at least 87% of the world's 626 large cities.
- Heavy rain
- 22 days with 20 mm of rain or more in 2025 [1]
- Higher than 88% of the world's large cities.
- For comparison: Shenzhen 23 days, Pune 23 days, Seoul 21 days.
- Coastal floods
- a 100-year flood from the sea puts 4.7% of the land around the centre (a 10 km square) under 0.5 m of water or more; 11% by 2080 if emissions keep rising [2]
- Higher than 87% of the world's large coastal cities.
- For comparison: Dalian 6.8%, Kobe 4.3%, Ho Chi Minh City 2.8%.
22 days Natural Earth Days with 20 mm of rain or more in 2025
This week in George Town
This week's forecast risk around the city, by day and by hour, and the hazard events near it now. [3] [4]
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 George Town stands out
every night of the year
Tropical nights in 2025, over 20 °C [1]
Higher than 93% of the world's large cities.
For comparison: Bangkok 337 nights, Mumbai 319 nights, Yangon 315 nights.
Around the city on the map
Coastal floods
Natural Earth Coastal flood depth, 100-year event, in today's climate
George Town's climate in the 2050s
2041-2060 compared with 1991-2020, if emissions level off [5] [6]
By the 2050s, George Town is projected to have a climate no large city has today. The nearest, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), is far from it.
+1.1 °C
Mean temperature over the year
+1.1 °C
Average daily high, warmest month
+1.1 °C
Average nightly low, coldest month
+1%
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 Kuala Lumpur. [7]
Everything else measured
From the highest among the world's 626 large cities to the lowest.
| Reading | George Town | Among 626 large cities |
|---|---|---|
| Earthquake shaking on firm ground, 10% chance in 50 years [8] | moderate shaking, 0.08 g | higher than 58% of large cities |
| Sea level rise by 2050 over the 1995-2014 average, if emissions level off [9] | 19 cm, 15 cm of it after 2020 | higher than 21% of large coastal cities |
| Hottest day of 2025 [1] | 32.6 °C | higher than 19% of large cities |
| Drought risk [10] | Medium-High | the same grade as 38% of large cities; higher than 12%, lower than 50% |
| Warming by 2050, if emissions level off [6] | +1.3 °C | higher than 10% of large cities |
| Water stress [10] | Low: under 10% of the available water drawn | lowest grade, like 30% of large cities |
| Hot days in 2025, over 35 °C [1] | 0 days | like 37% of large cities |
| River flood depth, 100-year event [2] | 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 [11] | 8% | higher than at least 80% of large cities |
| Land burned in an average year [12] | 0% | like 84% of large cities |
| Tropical cyclone wind, once in 100 years [13] | No hurricane or typhoon reaches here | like 71% of large cities |
- Flood depth is given for one 1 km square at the city centre, in today's climate.
- Earthquake shaking is given for firm ground in g, the acceleration of gravity: around 0.1 g shaking is strong and can cause light damage, on the US Geological Survey's scale. The figure is the typical value over all the land within 15 km of the centre, not that of one point. Soft ground, such as an old lake bed or river silt, shakes harder.
- 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.
- Medan · Indonesia · 280 km
- Kuala Lumpur · Malaysia · 290 km
- Pekanbaru · Indonesia · 550 km
- Singapore · 600 km
Large cities in Malaysia
Sources
- ERA5 Single Levels Daily Statistics: heavy rain, nights, hottest day, hot days
- Aqueduct Floods Hazard Maps: coastal floods, river flood depth
- Environment and Climate Change Canada: Global Deterministic Prediction System (GDPS): the week's forecast map
- NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS): wildfire near the city now
- TerraClimate: the 2050s comparison
- NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX-GDDP-CMIP6): the 2050s comparison, warming
- 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
- GSHAP Global Seismic Hazard Map: earthquake shaking
- IPCC AR6 Sea Level Projections: sea level rise
- Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Framework: drought risk, water stress
- 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, NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), TerraClimate, NEX-GDDP-CMIP6, GSHAP, IPCC, HydroShare, GFED500, IRIS
APA
Criora. (2026). George Town, Malaysia: climate risk profile [Data set]. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://criora.com/atlas/MYS/george-town BibTeX
@misc{criora_atlas_MYS_george_town_2026,
author = {{Criora}},
title = {George Town, Malaysia: climate risk profile},
year = {2026},
url = {https://criora.com/atlas/MYS/george-town},
urldate = {2026-11-04}
} The figures may be reused on the terms of their sources, which this page names.
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