Yemen
Yemen Geography & Climate
Geography
Yemen covers about 528,000 square kilometres at the south-west corner of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering Saudi Arabia and Oman, with coasts on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The highlands
Behind the coast the land rises steeply to a plateau above 2,000 metres, and Jabal an-Nabi Shu’ayb reaches 3,666 metres, the highest point in Arabia. Sanaa sits at around 2,250 metres, one of the highest capital cities in the world. The seaward slopes are cut into stone agricultural terraces built over centuries, and they are the reason this corner of Arabia could support a dense population when the rest could not.
The Tihama
A hot, humid coastal plain along the Red Sea, sandy and sparsely watered, with a culture closer to the African shore opposite.
The east and the desert
Inland the plateau falls away to desert running into the Empty Quarter. Cutting through it, the Hadhramaut is a long, deep valley system whose floor holds palm groves and the mud-brick towns.
Socotra
An island of about 3,600 square kilometres some 350 kilometres south of the mainland and much closer to the Horn of Africa. It separated from the continent millions of years ago, and roughly a third of its plants, along with many of its reptiles and snails, are found nowhere else. It is UNESCO-listed for exactly that.
Bab al-Mandab
The strait between Yemen and Djibouti is about thirty kilometres wide at its narrowest and is one of the most consequential chokepoints on earth: a large share of the world’s seaborne oil and container traffic passes through it on the way to the Suez Canal. Its name translates roughly as the gate of tears. That strategic position explains a great deal about why outside powers have involved themselves in Yemen for centuries.
Water
Yemen is among the most water-scarce countries on earth, and the aquifer beneath Sanaa is being drawn down severely.
Climate Patterns
Yemen has more climatic variety than anywhere else in Arabia, because altitude does so much work over a short distance.
The highlands
Above 2,000 metres the climate is temperate and genuinely pleasant — Sanaa averages 20 to 27°C by day through the year, with cold nights that can approach freezing in winter. Two rainy seasons, roughly March to May and July to September, green the terraces, and these are the rains the agriculture has depended on for millennia.
The Tihama coast
Hot and humid year round, with summer temperatures above 40°C and high humidity off the Red Sea making it one of the more punishing coastlines anywhere. Rainfall is low and erratic.
The interior and the Hadhramaut
Arid to hyper-arid, very hot in summer, with wide daily swings and negligible rain — though when it does rain, flash floods tear down the wadis and have damaged the mud-brick towns badly in recent years.
Socotra and the monsoon
The island is dominated by the south-west monsoon from June to September, when winds reach gale force, the sea becomes unnavigable and flights stop. The rest of the year is warm, 25 to 32°C, with light winter rain and mist on the mountains that sustains the endemic plants.
The terraces, and what they depend on
The stone agricultural terraces cut into the highland slopes are the largest such system in Arabia and among the oldest continuously worked anywhere, and they exist because the highlands catch monsoon moisture that the rest of the peninsula does not. They also require constant maintenance: a terrace wall left unrepaired for a few seasons collapses and takes the soil with it, and war, displacement and the shift of labour to qat have left many of them failing.
Climate pressure
Rainfall has become less reliable, and drought alternating with destructive flooding compounds the water crisis and the war’s effects on food supply.