Syria
Syria Geography & Climate
Geography
Syria covers about 185,000 square kilometres, bordering Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon, with a short Mediterranean coastline in the west.
The coast and the mountains
A narrow coastal plain around Latakia and Tartus rises quickly into the Jebel Ansariya, a limestone range running parallel to the sea. Behind it the Orontes valley, and further south the Anti-Lebanon mountains along the Lebanese border, where Mount Hermon reaches 2,814 metres and is the highest point in the country.
The western belt
Damascus sits in the Ghouta, an oasis watered by the Barada river coming out of the mountains — the reason a city could exist there for thousands of years on the edge of desert. North of it the fertile corridor through Homs, Hama and Aleppo has carried the population and the trade routes since antiquity.
The Euphrates
The great river crosses the north-east from Turkey to Iraq, dammed at Tabqa to form Lake Assad, and its valley supports the eastern agriculture. The Jazira plain beyond it holds the oil fields.
The steppe and desert
More than half the country is the Badiyat al-Sham, semi-arid steppe grading into desert, historically grazed by Bedouin and crossed by caravan routes. Palmyra sits in it at an oasis, which is the entire reason the city existed.
Why the cities sit where they do
Almost every major Syrian city stands on the line where enough rain falls to grow wheat without irrigation — roughly 200 millimetres a year — which runs in an arc from Damascus through Homs and Hama to Aleppo. East of that line the land needs a river or a well; west of it, the mountains take the rain. Five thousand years of settlement have followed that boundary, and so did the caravan routes that made Palmyra rich.
Water and drought
Rivers are shared and contested with Turkey and Iraq, and a severe drought in the years before 2011 drove rural depopulation into the cities.
Climate Patterns
Syria has a Mediterranean climate in the west that turns steadily more continental and then arid as you move east, and the difference across a few hours of driving is considerable.
The coast
Latakia and Tartus have mild wet winters around 10 to 16°C and warm humid summers around 28 to 32°C, with most of the country’s rain — up to a thousand millimetres a year on the seaward mountain slopes — falling between November and March.
The interior
Damascus and Aleppo sit in the rain shadow of the mountains and are much drier, with 200 to 400 millimetres a year. Summers are hot and dry, above 35°C, but with low humidity and a marked drop at night. Winters are genuinely cold: near freezing overnight, occasional snow, and the practical problem is that heating and electricity are unreliable.
The desert
The eastern steppe and the Palmyra basin are arid, under 150 millimetres a year, with summer temperatures above 40°C and cold winter nights. The daily range is wide in every season.
Wind and dust
The khamsin blows off the desert in spring, raising temperatures sharply and carrying dust for days at a time.
What it means in practice
The seasons are straightforward; the infrastructure is not. A Damascus winter night near freezing is unremarkable weather and a real problem in a building with electricity for a few hours a day, and a July afternoon at Palmyra is dangerous less because of the temperature than because shade, water and a working vehicle cannot be assumed. Plan around what is available rather than around the forecast.
Drought
Rainfall has been declining and the drought of the late 2000s was among the worst on record, emptying farming villages in the north-east. Water scarcity is now a structural problem, worsened by damage to infrastructure and by upstream dams.