Morocco is experiencing one of its hottest summers on record in 2026, not through a single continuous heat wave but through a rapid succession of extreme heat episodes, a pattern a recent scientific study links to a deeper long-term warming trend across North Africa, according to local news outlet Medias24.
A Climate Pulse map for August 4 showed a temperature anomaly of generally 2 to 4 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average across much of Morocco, reaching as high as 6 degrees in the country’s far south, with the sharpest anomalies concentrated in central Morocco, the Atlas Mountains and parts of the southeast.
A study published June 22 in Nature Climate Change, analyzing global heat stress trends from 1950 to 2024 using the Universal Thermal Climate Index, found North Africa and the Mediterranean basin among the regions where perceived heat has intensified most sharply, with felt temperatures on the hottest days of the year rising by up to 4 degrees Celsius, and locally 5 degrees, since the 1970s.
Extreme heat stress now occurs 1.8 times more often across Africa than in the 1970s, the study found, with Morocco among the areas most affected. Nighttime temperatures are proving especially concerning: globally, the hottest nights are warming slightly faster than the hottest days, limiting the ability of buildings to cool overnight and reducing the human body’s capacity to recover from daytime heat.
The World Meteorological Organization separately reported on July 31 that a strong El Nino event is developing in the tropical Pacific and expected to intensify between August and October, a natural phenomenon that can compound the underlying warming trend, though the organization cautioned this does not mean El Nino can be directly blamed for Morocco’s current heat episodes.
