Data story · Weather
The hottest cities in the world, year by year.
Baghdad has the hottest days of the 193 cities in Huezle, by more than two degrees. But rank the cities by the whole year instead of the worst afternoon, and Baghdad drops to 50th.
Every strip on this page is a real Weather strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about Weather.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one city, with one band per year from 2001 on the left to 2025 on the right. In most strips here a band is coloured by that year’s hottest day, the single highest daily maximum, from Mild through Hot to Scorching. The scale is the same for every city, so a deep band means a hot day anywhere on Earth.
The numbers come from NASA POWER, a gridded dataset built from satellite observations and a weather model. A city’s value is its grid cell’s, an area tens of kilometres across, so it will not match a famous station record to the decimal.
Baghdad, then a long way back
- Mild
- Hot
- Scorching
Baghdad’s hottest day, averaged over 25 years, is 50.4 °C. Its peak in this data is 52.6 °C, in 2020. Only one other city has a single year at 50 °C or above: Lahore, once, at 50.6 °C in 2007. Behind them the list runs Delhi (47.2 °C), Lucknow (46.9 °C), then Riyadh and Phoenix, tied at 46.5 °C.
- Lahore · 48.2 °C
- Phoenix · 46.5 °C
- Singapore · 32.6 °C
- Mild
- Hot
- Scorching
The hottest days belong to the dry belt from the Arabian Peninsula across Pakistan and northern India, with the American Southwest close behind. Twenty-three of the 193 cities have hit 45 °C at least once since 2001, and only three did it every year: Baghdad, Lahore and Riyadh.
Look at the bottom row. Singapore sits almost on the equator and is warm every day, yet its hottest day averages only 32.6 °C and never passed 34 °C. Humid tropical air rarely spikes: the moisture and cloud that come with it hold the afternoon peak down.
The hottest all year: Khartoum
Rank by average temperature across the whole year and the list changes almost completely. This strip uses the app’s temperature measure, one band per year coloured from Cold through Mild to Hot.
- Cold
- Mild
- Hot
Khartoum, where the Blue and White Nile meet, averages 29.2 °C, ahead of Niamey and Dubai. Baghdad, the runaway leader on hottest days, averages 24.1 °C: its summers are brutal but its winters are cool. Darwin shows the opposite pattern, fifth warmest across the year at 28.2 °C while its hottest day averages a modest 35.4 °C.
So “the hottest city in the world” depends on what you mean. For the worst afternoon, Baghdad. For January to December, Khartoum. The coolest summers belong to Longyearbyen in Svalbard, whose hottest day averages 10.0 °C; its winters are on the coldest cities page.
What about Death Valley? The official world air-temperature record was set in Death Valley, California, which is not a city and not in this data. Records like that come from one station on one day. The figures here are typical yearly peaks for a whole grid cell, a different and much less extreme thing.
The same cities are drawn for other measures: which are warming fastest, the windiest, and the rest of the Weather category.
In Huezle a strip like these comes with four cities to choose from. Can you tell a desert from the tropics by its summers alone?
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What is the hottest city in the world?
It depends on the measure. Of the 193 cities in Huezle, Baghdad has the hottest days, averaging 50.4 °C for the hottest day of each year from 2001 to 2025. Khartoum has the highest average temperature across the whole year, 29.2 °C.
Which cities reach 50 °C?
In this data, only Baghdad and Lahore. Baghdad’s hottest day reached 50 °C or more in 15 of the 25 years from 2001 to 2025; Lahore did it once, in 2007.
Why are tropical cities like Singapore not on the list?
Humid equatorial cities are warm every day but rarely spike. Singapore’s average temperature is 27.1 °C, yet its hottest day of the year averages only 32.6 °C. The hottest days happen in dry places, where nothing holds the afternoon heat back.
Where does the data come from?
NASA POWER, a free, public-domain dataset built from satellite observations and a weather model. Each city’s value is its grid cell’s, so it can differ from a single weather station in the city.
More guides
- The coldest cities in the world, year by year.Yakutsk drops below −50 °C every winter. The coldest nights in 193 cities, 2001 to 2025, drawn as strips of colour from NASA data.
- Which cities are warming fastest?The 25-year temperature trend for 193 cities, from NASA data. Central Europe warmed fastest, the tropics slowest, and a few cities went the other way.
- The windiest cities in the world.The windiest of 193 cities are all in the Southern Hemisphere, the calmest all in the rainforest. Everyday wind, 2001 to 2025, as strips of colour.
- The cities most often hit by earthquakes and tropical cyclones.Davao and Tokyo lead 58 cities for strong earthquakes and tropical storms nearby, 2001 to 2025, counted year by year from USGS and NOAA.
Now try naming one yourself.
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