Sunniest Places on Earth by Annual Sunshine

About This Dataset

This chart ranks the sunniest places on Earth by average annual hours of sunshine. Yuma, Arizona, recognised by Guinness World Records as the sunniest place on Earth, sees clear skies over 90% of daylight hours.

✨ AI Insight

Yuma, Arizona, leads the world with about 4,015 hours of sunshine a year, meaning the sun shines during more than 90% of all possible daylight hours. To put that in perspective, a full year contains roughly 4,380 daylight hours, so Yuma is cloudy for only a tiny fraction of the time. The rest of the list is dominated by desert locations where dry, stable air keeps clouds away: Egypt's Marsa Alam (3,958 hours) and Aswan (3,863), Chile's Calama (3,926) in the Atacama, Arizona's Phoenix (3,871) and Namibia's Keetmanshoop (3,870). All six exceed 3,850 hours, clustering within about 4% of one another. The common ingredient is subtropical high pressure over arid land, the same climatic setting that also produces the world's driest places.

Source: WMO / sunshine duration records

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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Yuma (USA) leads with 4,015 in All Time.

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Average value in All Time: 3,917 · median: 3,899.

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Gap in All Time: Yuma (USA) is 1× larger than Aswan (Egypt).