A different climate between the north and the south
On the coastal regions of Tunisia, the climate is mild in spring and autumn, hotter in summer with a sea breeze on the beaches. You can swim until October or even November. In the north, it rains quite often in winter and spring, it can also be a few degrees below zero in the Kroumirie mountains. In the south, it is extremely hot and dry in the summer, with temperatures sometimes rising to around 50°C in the shade, but the nights can be a little cool. Temperatures are very pleasant in the spring. The best season to visit the south is winter, which despite cool nights, offers beautiful sunny days, ideal for walking in the oasis or the desert. Unfortunately, since 1999, Tunisia has been suffering from an overwhelming drought. In the south, it is not uncommon to see the little greenery that was already developing with difficulty.
The annual rainfall varies according to the regions: in the north, from 800 mm to 1,000 mm and, in the south, from 50 mm to 150 mm. Rainfall is irregular, concentrated during the cold season (75% of the annual total). The significant aridity of the summer season is mainly due to the sirocco. The average temperatures of the country are 30°C in July and 12°C in December. The country also enjoys a sunshine rate exceeding 3,000 hours per year
August 2021: extreme temperature record
It made the headlines during the summer of 2021: temperatures more than scorching noted in several regions of the world. Tunisia has not been left behind since August 11, 2021, the temperature record was reached in the governorate of Kairouan, east-central Tunisia. The National Institute of Meteorology (INM) of Tunisia recorded a temperature of 50.3 ° C, close to the record of the African continent (51.3 ° C in Ouargla, Algeria in 2018). The previous extreme temperature in Tunisia dates back to July 26, 2005 with 50.1 ° C in El Borma south of the country. This day of August 2021, the INM also reported that temperature records were broken in several cities: in Sfax (45.8 ° C against 47.7 ° C in 2005); in Nabeul (46.3 ° C against 45.5 ° C in 2018); in Sidi Bouzid (47.4 ° C against 46.8 ° C in 1960). This obviously reflects global warming and these phenomena likely to recur more and more from year to year.
The five bioclimatic zones in Tunisia according to Emberger
Louis Emberger (1897-1969), a French botanist, created the Emberger quotient, an index that classifies areas from arid to high mountain (only Morocco includes them all). This quotient or index takes into account the observation made on the vegetation according to the rainfall and temperatures of an area. Thus, the map of the five bioclimatic zones of Tunisia, published postmortem in 1975, logically shows that the country is more humid in the north and arid in the south with the Sahara.
The time of the grenadines
At the end of September and the beginning of October, a mild heat returns to the whole country, which started to lose, day after day, slight degrees. We say here that it is the "time of the pomegranates". The weather caprices help the good big pomegranates to finish ripening so that they can be found on the shelves and tasted. Then the thermometer can resume its gentle plunge and bring the country into winter.
