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Bissau has a tropical savanna (dry winter) climate.
Hot all year, with humid air and reliable rain — no real cool season.
What this climate feels like
The four things a regular visitor actually wants to know:
Daytime highs near 36°C most of the year.
Even the coolest nights stay near 18°C.
About 1271 mm of rain a year. Wettest in August.
More sun than cloud through the year.
What "tropical savanna (dry winter)" means
Climate scientists sort every place on Earth into about 30 climate types, based on how hot, cold, wet and dry it is across the year. Bissau's type — tropical savanna (dry winter) — sits in the broad family of hot, humid climates near the equator.
Researchers write climate types as a short letter code. Here is what each letter means:
Cities with the same climate as Bissau
A tropical savanna (dry winter) climate (Aw) — these recognizable cities share it. If you know one of them, you know roughly what to expect.
Bissau sits near a climate boundary
This city sits right on the line between tropical savanna (dry winter) and the next type along. Different climate maps file it on different sides of that line; the lived weather doesn't change at the line — it's a naming boundary, not a wall.
Has Bissau's climate type changed?
Stable — Bissau's climate has held the same type between the 1971–2000 and 1991–2020 normals. The label is steady; the climate beneath it is still warming.
What this climate means for you
Tropical perennials, mangoes and citrus do well — but the dry season needs irrigation and the wet season brings storm damage and fungal pressure.
The dry winter is the gold-standard travel window — warm, sunny and stable. The wet summer is hot, humid and storm-prone.
Year-round heat with a hard split between a dry winter (clear skies, low humidity for the tropics) and a humid, stormy summer.
Where these numbers come from
The climate type and the month-by-month figures on this page are computed from Bissau's measured 30-year climate normals (1991–2020) — the same official records behind Bissau's main climate page, so the two always agree.
Long-range climate maps measure things slightly differently and can place a city in a neighbouring category. Where they differ, this page uses the measured station record as the climate today.
Methodology & sources
Temperature & precipitation — 1991–2020 normals computed from 29 years of daily observations at Ziguinchor, a weather station, about 107 km from the city centre. The underlying daily records come from NOAA's global station network.