Ethiopia lies wholly within the tropics, but its climate is controlled by altitude far more than by latitude. On the Ethiopian Highlands, where most people live, the weather is mild all year: Addis Ababa, at about 2,355 m, averages 17.1°C. In the lowlands it is hot and often dry, and Dallol in the Danakil Depression, about 130 m below sea level, recorded an average annual temperature of 34.6°C between 1960 and 1966, the highest of any inhabited place on Earth. Rain comes mainly in the kiremt season from June to September, with lighter belg rains in spring and a dry bega season from about October to January, and those summer rains feed the Blue Nile.
Altitude Over Latitude on the Roof of Africa
Everything starts with the Ethiopian Highlands, sometimes called the "Roof of Africa". They form the largest continuous area of such high ground on the continent, with little of their surface below 1,500 m and summits up to 4,550 m. The Great Rift Valley cuts across them diagonally, splitting the Abyssinian Massif in the north-west, with the Simien Mountains and Lake Tana, from the Harar Massif in the south-east.
Because air cools as it rises, a few hours' drive in Ethiopia can cover the temperature range of several countries. Most of the major cities, including Addis Ababa and the historic capitals Gondar and Axum, sit at around 2,000–2,500 m, where mean annual temperatures run around 15–20°C. The lowlands average 25–30°C. Ethiopians have long described this pattern with a set of named altitude zones rather than with the four seasons of temperate countries.
Wikipedia's article on the climate of Ethiopia lists five traditional zones: bereha (hot and arid), kolla (warm and semi-arid), weyna dega (cool and sub-humid), dega (cool and humid) and wurch (cool and moist). The exact altitude boundaries vary from source to source, so the figures below are approximate.
Bereha: The Danakil Depression and Dallol
The hottest zone is the desert lowland of the north-east. The Danakil Depression, a valley of about 200 by 50 km across the north of the Afar Region and into Eritrea, lies about 125 m below sea level, between the Ethiopian Plateau to the west and the Danakil Alps, beyond which is the Red Sea. It is a rift basin, formed as the Danakil microplate pulls away from the Nubian plate, and it is the third-lowest place in Africa.
Dallol, an abandoned mining settlement at about 130 m below sea level, holds the record for the highest average annual temperature of any inhabited location: 34.6°C (94.3°F), measured from 1960 to 1966. Its average daily high over the year was 41.2°C, the hottest month averaged a high of 46.7°C, and the highest reading was 49°C. Several things combine to produce the heat: very low elevation, a tropical latitude, nearness to the hot Red Sea in winter and a lack of cooling at night. Rain falls on only a few days a year.
The same hot, dry conditions extend across much of the Somali Region in the south-east, where desert and semi-desert cover the lowlands. For the wider desert landscape, see our guide to the Danakil Desert.
Kolla: Gambela, Dire Dawa and the Warm Lowlands
Above the true deserts, the warm, semi-arid kolla covers lowlands and deep valleys generally below about 1,500 m. Places below roughly 1,200 m, such as the gorges of the Tekezé and the Abay (Blue Nile), have tropical conditions where malaria has historically been common. In the far west, the lower Sobat basin around Gambela is hot and swampy. Gambela's weather station at 480 m averages highs of about 32–41°C and lows above 20°C in every month, giving an annual mean close to 29°C.
Dire Dawa, on the eastern edge of the highlands at 1,276 m, averaged 25.8°C over 1991–2020, with daily highs of about 32.6°C. Its record high is 42°C. The natural vegetation of the kolla is open woodland of acacia, Terminalia, Commiphora and Boswellia, the trees that yield myrrh and frankincense.
Weyna Dega: The Temperate Middle Belt
The weyna dega is the temperate zone where much of Ethiopia's population is concentrated. Wikipedia's climate article places it between about 1,500 and 2,500 m, with temperatures between 16°C and 30°C. Its natural woodland was dominated by the conifers Afrocarpus gracilior and Juniperus procera, though much of it has long been cleared or grazed.
Gondar, at 2,133 m north of Lake Tana, sits squarely in this zone: its mean temperature is 20°C, with afternoon highs near 29°C in March and lows of about 9°C in December. Lalibela and Mekelle have similar climates, with average highs between about 20°C and 27°C and nights of 8–13°C.
Addis Ababa's Year at 17°C
The capital sits in the upper weyna dega, below the Entoto tableland, at about 2,355 m, one of the highest capitals in the world. Its 1991–2020 averages show how little the temperature changes through the year: monthly means range only from 15.5°C in December to 18.8°C in April and May, and the annual mean is 17.1°C. The warmest temperature ever recorded there is 30.6°C, and frost-level readings of 0°C have been recorded in the dry months from October to March.
What changes is rain. Addis Ababa receives about 1,056 mm a year in the 1991–2020 table, and its seasons are defined by wet and dry rather than hot and cold. There are on average seven hours of sunshine a day, and even in July and August, the wettest months, there are usually several hours of bright sunshine.
Dega and Wurch: Frost in the Simien and Bale Mountains
Above roughly 2,500–2,600 m the dega begins: cool, humid highland plateaus. Debre Birhan, at about 2,840 m and some 130 km north-east of Addis Ababa, averages around 14°C, with night lows of about 5°C in December and January.
The highest ground, the wurch, is Afroalpine moorland. In the Simien Mountains north-east of Gondar, a World Heritage Site since 1978, Ras Dashen rises to 4,550 m and Kidis Yared to 4,453 m, and this is one of the few places in tropical Africa where snow falls regularly. In the south-east, Bale Mountains National Park covers about 2,150 km², much of it above 3,000 m, and contains Africa's largest area of Afromontane habitat, with glacial lakes and a high point at Tullu Dimtu, 4,385 m; above 3,000 m night frosts are common. The Bale Mountains were added to the World Heritage List in 2023. For the landforms themselves, see our Ethiopian Highlands geography guide.
Kiremt, Belg and Bega: The Rainfall Calendar
Ethiopia's seasons follow the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), the belt of rising, rain-bearing air that moves north over northern Ethiopia in July and August and south to southern Kenya by January and February. That gives three main seasons in most of the country:
- Kiremt (June to September): the main rains. In Addis Ababa, July and August each bring about 240 mm. The season is so central to farming that 85–95% of food crops are produced from it. Rain is heaviest in the Tekezé basin in July and August and lasts until mid-September in the western highlands of the former Gojjam and Welega provinces.
- Belg (roughly February to May): the short rains. They begin in the south and centre and are highly variable; a good March rain lets farmers plant short-cycle barley, wheat and teff. The south and the southern lowlands instead have two rainy periods, from March to May and from September to November.
- Bega (about October to January): the dry season, with mostly hot days and cool nights; morning frost is common over much of the highlands.
Annual totals range from about 750 mm in Tigray and Amhara to over 1,000 mm in parts of Oromia, with the wettest areas in the south-west and the driest in the Afar and Somali lowlands.
From the 1983–1985 Famine to the Blue Nile Flood
Failed rains have cost Ethiopia dearly. The famine of 1983–1985, the worst in Ethiopia for a century, affected about 7.75 million people and killed an estimated 300,000 to 1.2 million. Drought was one cause, but Human Rights Watch attributed more than half of the deaths to human rights abuses, and both it and Oxfam linked the famine partly to the government's counter-insurgency policies during the civil war, especially in Tigray and Wollo. More recently, the 2020–2023 Horn of Africa drought killed about 4 million livestock in Ethiopia. Between the mid-1970s and late 2000s, belg and kiremt rainfall fell by 15–20% across parts of southern, south-western and south-eastern Ethiopia.
The kiremt rains also matter far beyond Ethiopia. They feed the Blue Nile, which leaves Lake Tana, drops over the Blue Nile Falls and cuts a gorge up to 1,500 m deep before flowing into Sudan. During the rainy season it supplies about 85.6% of the water in the Nile.
Since 2011 Ethiopia has built the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region, near the Sudanese border, finishing in 2025. With 5.15 GW of installed capacity, it is the largest hydroelectric plant in Africa, and its reservoir was filled in stages each rainy season from July 2020. If you are planning a trip around these seasons, our guide to the best time to visit Ethiopia matches each region to its driest months.