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Historical weather records recovered from paper archives at 37 stations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) show nearly twice as many hot days per year in the latest decade analyzed as in the earliest, according to a 2026 EGUsphere preprint. The abstract does not identify the decades or the threshold used to define a hot day, so the finding should not be read as a precise count for a particular year—or as a measurement of every part of the Congo Basin.
What the rescued records show
The study’s authors report that hot days became more frequent across the available station records, while cold extremes became less frequent. In the preprint’s comparison, the latest decade had nearly twice as many hot days per year as the earliest. That is a relative change in the study’s analysis, not a claim that every location in the Congo Basin experienced the same increase.
The abstract does not state the endpoints of the comparison decades or the temperature threshold used to classify a day as hot. It therefore does not establish exactly which years are being compared or how many days met the definition. The title’s “over two decades” should not be taken to mean that the two decade-long periods were exactly 20 years apart.
Temperature trends in the preprint
For 21 of the 37 stations with enough data for the temperature analysis, the authors report these median trends:
#1 Best Overall
| Measure | Median trend reported in the 2026 EGUsphere preprint |
|---|---|
| Daily maximum temperature | 0.22 °C per decade |
| Daily minimum temperature | 0.10 °C per decade |
| Daily average temperature | 0.15 °C per decade |
These are median station trends, not a single temperature increase measured uniformly across the DRC. The paper also describes warming in the distributions of maximum, minimum and average daily temperatures from one successive decade to the next.
How researchers recovered the observations
The team assembled more than one million temperature and precipitation observations from 37 DRC weather stations. The source material was paper records held in local archives: researchers imaged 9,885 sheets and transcribed them using MeteoSaver version 1.1.
The rescued data include daily maximum, minimum and average temperatures and precipitation. They also include dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures recorded at 06:00, 15:00 and 18:00 local time. Recovering these records addresses a practical gap described by the authors: much of the region’s historical daily weather information remained on paper and unavailable for climate analysis.
What the precipitation results can—and cannot—say
Only three stations had enough data for the precipitation analysis described in the abstract. Heavy-precipitation-event frequency increased at two and showed no substantial change at the third. With coverage this limited, the authors caution against drawing broader conclusions about precipitation across the DRC.
Rank #3
Why two published summaries report different numbers
The EGUsphere preprint and a 2026 EGU conference abstract describe the same project but give modestly different median temperature trends. The conference abstract reports 0.24 °C per decade for maximum temperature, 0.09 °C per decade for minimum temperature and 0.18 °C per decade for average temperature. It also reports about twice as many hot days and about half as many cold days in the latest compared decade as in the earliest. These figures belong to that conference abstract; they should not be blended with the preprint’s estimates.
| Source version | Maximum | Minimum | Average | Cold-day finding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EGUsphere preprint, 2026 | 0.22 °C per decade | 0.10 °C per decade | 0.15 °C per decade | Cold extremes decreased; the abstract gives no comparable fraction. |
| EGU conference abstract, 2026 | 0.24 °C per decade | 0.09 °C per decade | 0.18 °C per decade | About half as many cold days in the latest compared decade as in the earliest. |
The EGUsphere paper was posted on 4 May 2026 as a preprint. Its status as of publication is not established here, so the results should be attributed to the preprint rather than described as peer-reviewed findings unless that status is confirmed.
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How this fits with other Congo Basin climate evidence
A separate 2023 study analyzed digitized daily weather data from Yangambi for 1960–2020 and reported evidence of warming and a more intense seasonal rainfall cycle. It concerns one location and a different dataset; it is useful regional context, not part of the 2026 analysis of rescued records from 37 DRC stations.
The 2026 work adds historical observations from multiple DRC stations, but its coverage does not represent every country or location in the Congo Basin. Its temperature trends draw on 21 stations, and its precipitation findings on just three.
Quick Recap
Sources
- Muheki et al., “From Paper to Proof: Revealing Congo Basin Warming Through Rescued Climate Archives,” EGUsphere preprint, posted 4 May 2026.
- EGU26 conference abstract for the same research, 2026.
- “Ground-based climate data show evidence of warming and intensification of the seasonal rainfall cycle during the 1960–2020 period in Yangambi, central Congo Basin,” Climatic Change, 2023.
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