Climate risk in Kathmandu
Bagmati Province, Nepal
Main risks in Kathmandu
On heavy rain and earthquakes, Kathmandu ranks above at least 98% of the world's 626 large cities.
- Heavy rain
- 48 days with 20 mm of rain or more in 2025 [1]
- Higher than 99% of the world's large cities.
- For comparison: Quezon City 51 days, Chittagong 47 days, Yangon 46 days.
- Earthquakes
- severe shaking on firm ground (0.49 g), more on soft ground [2]
- Higher than 98% of the world's large cities.
- For comparison: Yokohama 0.52 g, Los Angeles 0.47 g, Tehran 0.41 g.
- g is the pull of gravity: from about 0.1 g, shaking is strong and can cause light damage to buildings.
48 days Natural Earth Days with 20 mm of rain or more in 2025
This week in Kathmandu
This week's forecast risk around the city, by day and by hour, and the hazard events near it now. [3]
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 mapAround the city on the map
Earthquakes
Natural Earth Earthquake shaking on firm ground, 10% chance in 50 years
Kathmandu's climate in the 2050s
2041-2060 compared with 1991-2020, if emissions level off [4] [5]
By the 2050s, Kathmandu is projected to have a climate that no large city has today, not even Kathmandu itself. Of the others, Brisbane (Australia) comes closest, and it is still far off.
+1.5 °C
Mean temperature over the year
+1.5 °C
Average daily high, warmest month
+1.5 °C
Average nightly low, coldest month
+2%
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 Brisbane. [6]
Everything else measured
From the highest among the world's 626 large cities to the lowest.
| Reading | Kathmandu | Among 626 large cities |
|---|---|---|
| Drought risk [7] | High | the same grade as 44% of large cities; higher than 50%, lower than 6% |
| Warming by 2050, if emissions level off [5] | +1.9 °C | higher than 44% of large cities |
| Water stress [7] | Medium-High: 20 to 40% of the available water drawn | the same grade as 13% of large cities; higher than 43%, lower than 44% |
| Tropical nights in 2025, over 20 °C [1] | 56 nights | higher than 36% of large cities |
| Hottest day of 2025 [1] | 29.4 °C | higher than 5% of large cities |
| Hot days in 2025, over 35 °C [1] | 0 days | like 37% of large cities |
| River flood depth, 100-year event [8] | 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 [9] | 2% | higher than at least 80% of large cities |
| Land burned in an average year [10] | 0% | like 84% of large cities |
| Tropical cyclone wind, once in 100 years [11] | 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 [8] | 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.
- If emissions level off: 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.
Large cities in Nepal
Sources
- ERA5 Single Levels Daily Statistics: heavy rain, nights, hottest day, hot days
- GSHAP Global Seismic Hazard Map: earthquake shaking
- Environment and Climate Change Canada: Global Deterministic Prediction System (GDPS): the week's forecast map
- 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
- Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Framework: drought risk, water stress
- Aqueduct Floods Hazard Maps: river flood depth, coastal floods
- 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
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In a line
Source: Criora (criora.com), based on ECMWF, GSHAP, ECCC, TerraClimate, NEX-GDDP-CMIP6, WRI, HydroShare, GFED500, IRIS
APA
Criora. (2026). Kathmandu, Nepal: climate risk profile [Data set]. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://criora.com/atlas/NPL/kathmandu BibTeX
@misc{criora_atlas_NPL_kathmandu_2026,
author = {{Criora}},
title = {Kathmandu, Nepal: climate risk profile},
year = {2026},
url = {https://criora.com/atlas/NPL/kathmandu},
urldate = {2026-11-04}
} The figures may be reused on the terms of their sources, which this page names.
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