Cape Town or Dubai: which climate?
Cape Town (South Africa) has a warm-summer mediterranean climate, whereas Dubai (United Arab Emirates) has a hot desert climate, according to the Köppen-Geiger classification.
The values compared here are normals computed over 86 complete calendar years, from 1940 to 2025, using ERA5 reanalysis data from the Copernicus programme. The same method and the same period apply to Cape Town and to Dubai.
Dubai is warmer than Cape Town by 11.1 °C in annual average: 27.4 °C against 16.3 °C.
Cape Town gets more rain than Dubai: 539 mm per year against 76 mm.
Dubai gets 11.3 hours of sunshine per day on average, against 10.9 hours in Cape Town.
Dubai has warmed by +2.5 °C between 1940 and 2025, against +0.8 °C in Cape Town. Dubai is therefore warming faster than Cape Town. Both trends are statistically significant.
Cape Town averages 0 hot days (≥ 30 °C) and 0 frost days per year; Dubai averages 241 and 0.
Data from ERA5 reanalysis (Copernicus Climate Change Service), redistributed under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. Normals are recomputed whenever the archive is updated.
| Indicator | Cape Town | Dubai | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mean daily temperature | 16.3 °C | 27.4 °C | +11.1 °C |
| Average daily high | 18.7 °C | 33.7 °C | +15.0 °C |
| Average daily low | 14.4 °C | 21.7 °C | +7.3 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 539 mm | 76 mm | -463 mm |
| Sunshine / day | 10.9 h | 11.3 h | +0.4 h |
| Hot days (≥ 30 °C) | 0 d/yr | 241 d/yr | +241 d/yr |
| Frost days (< 0 °C) | 0 d/yr | 0 d/yr | negligible |
| Rainy days (≥ 1 mm) | 77 d/yr | 11 d/yr | -66 d/yr |
| Mean relative humidity | 78 % | 56 % | -22 % |
| Average peak wind | 26.3 km/h | 21.8 km/h | -4.5 km/h |
A difference is only reported when it exceeds the resolution of the data. ERA5 is a reanalysis on a grid of about 31 km: two nearby cities often fall in the same cell, and below half a degree you are reading the grid, not the climate.