Polymarket's busiest weather markets are the daily "Highest temperature in [city] on [date]?" lines. Each one settles on a single, named weather station, and each city has its own climate quirks that quietly bias that station's reading. This is the per-city field guide: where the market actually measures, the local physics that move the number, the seasonal pattern, and the real edge a trader can work in each place. It deepens our guide to trading weather & climate markets.

Polymarket weather category filtered to Temperature, showing per-city daily markets - Highest temperature in Chengdu, Seoul, Paris, Munich, Shanghai, Beijing and London on June 30 - each with Celsius thresholds priced Yes and No.

The live Temperature board: one daily market per city (Chengdu, Seoul, Paris, Munich, London and dozens more), each Celsius threshold trading as its own Yes/No line, with a date selector across the top.

The station is everything

Before any city, internalise the one rule that decides most of these markets: the contract does not resolve on "the weather in the city". It resolves on the highest temperature recorded at one specific station, and across the current board that station is almost always the main airport, read from Wunderground's daily history for that station. Airports are deliberately sited on flat, open ground, often by water or outside the urban core, so they frequently read a degree or two off the downtown number everyone else is glancing at. That gap between "the city forecast" and "the station that pays" is where a prepared trader lives.

So every city profile below leads with its exact settlement station, then the climate physics that bias that station, because the edge is rarely "guess the weather" and almost always "know how this station behaves versus the headline forecast".

How to read each city profile

Every city follows the same four-part skeleton, so you can scan any of them the same way:

  • The station - exactly where the market settles and how that siting skews the reading.
  • Local weather physics - the climate machinery (marine layer, basin inversion, sea breeze, monsoon dewpoint, continental swings) that pushes the daily high.
  • Seasonality - the month-by-month normal, and what counts as an edge versus just "warm".
  • How to play this city - the specific, repeatable read, not generic "buy the likely band".

A note on method: the worked reads below are qualitative and deliberately simple - compare the settlement station's recent observed highs and the day's local forecast against the one-degree band the market is pricing. No proprietary model is implied or needed; the value is in knowing the station and the climate, which is public.

Amsterdam - the maritime cap

The station

Amsterdam's market settles on the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol station. Schiphol sits in the Haarlemmermeer polder, on reclaimed land that is actually a few metres below sea level, on open flat ground roughly 9 km southwest of the city centre and close to the North Sea coast. It is about as exposed-to-the-sea and un-urban as a major-airport station gets, which matters enormously for summer highs.

Settles on: Schiphol (EHAM) daily max via Wunderground's station history - the exact source the market reads.

Local weather physics

This is a textbook maritime climate. The North Sea is cool and never far away, so a sea breeze regularly develops on warm afternoons and drags the temperature back down right when the daily high would otherwise be setting. Amsterdam does not do extreme heat the way an inland continental city does; the water moderates both ends of the day and keeps the cloud deck busy (Schiphol is partly cloudy most of the year). Wind is a near-constant, and wind direction is the whole story: a southeasterly flow off the continent can let heat build, while any westerly pulls marine air straight over the runway and caps it.

Seasonality

Summer highs are mild by world standards - July and August average around 22°C, and a genuinely hot day (low 30s°C) is a handful-of-times-a-year event tied to that southeasterly continental flow. Winters are cool and grey rather than frigid: average highs sit near 6-7°C, with February typically the coldest. The annual high envelope roughly runs 1°C to 22°C, so the daily bands are clustered tightly for much of the year.

How to play this city

The repeatable edge is the sea breeze. On a forecast warm afternoon, the headline city forecast often prints the optimistic, sun-baked number; Schiphol, out on the polder with the sea alongside, frequently lands a notch lower as the breeze fills in. When the market is pricing a band right at the top of a warm-day forecast, the marine moderation usually favours the band just below the headline. The exception, and the day to respect the upside, is a clear southeasterly continental flow - that is when Schiphol can actually run with the inland heat.

Chengdu - the basin lid

The station

Chengdu settles on the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport station, which sits on the floor of the Sichuan Basin southwest of the city. The key fact is not the airport's micro-siting but the bowl it sits in: the basin is ringed by the Qin Mountains to the north and the Longmen Mountains to the west, which trap air and shape almost everything the station records.

Settles on: Chengdu Shuangliu (ZUUU) daily max via Wunderground's station history - the exact source the market reads.

Local weather physics

Chengdu is one of the cloudiest, least-sunny major cities on earth - roughly 200 overcast days a year and only about 1,000-1,200 hours of sunshine, because the surrounding mountains pen in stagnant, humid air. Relative humidity stays above 70% year-round and climbs past 80% in the rainy season. That persistent cloud and moisture is a lid on daytime heating: the sun rarely gets a clean shot at the ground, so highs are suppressed relative to a dry, sunny city at the same latitude. From late autumn into winter (November to February) the basin also fogs up in the mornings, several days a month, delaying any warming.

Seasonality

The hottest stretch is July and August, with average highs of 28-30°C - warm and very humid, but capped by the cloud rather than spiking. January is the cold, grey floor at roughly 3-9°C. Spring and autumn are the mild, pleasant shoulder seasons around 15-25°C. Because the cloud lid is so consistent, Chengdu's daily highs are less volatile than a continental city's; the surprises come from the rare clear day.

How to play this city

Respect the lid. The systematic mistake is pricing Chengdu like a sunny subtropical city and expecting the top band to hit; on a normal overcast, humid day the cloud keeps the actual high a band or two under what raw latitude/season would suggest. The asymmetry flips on the unusual clear day - a genuine break in the cloud after the rainy season, or a dry spell, is when the upper bands suddenly become live, because the ground finally heats. Morning fog in the cold months is the same trade in reverse: it eats into the day's warming and favours the lower band.

Jeddah - the Red Sea humidity engine

The station

Jeddah settles on the King Abdulaziz International Airport station, a coastal site just inland of the Red Sea on the western edge of Saudi Arabia. Here the relevant geography is the contrast between the warm Red Sea on one side and open desert on the other - the station sits right in the tug-of-war between them.

Settles on: King Abdulaziz Intl (OEJN) daily max via Wunderground's station history - the exact source the market reads.

Local weather physics

Jeddah is hot desert, but coastal, so the defining feature is not just heat - it is heat plus humidity. The warm Red Sea pumps moisture onshore, pushing summer relative humidity into the 70-90% range and making August the most humid month (around 70% average RH). Two competing flows decide the daily high: the moist sea breeze, which moderates the raw air temperature near the coast, versus the dry, dusty northeasterly Shamal winds that dominate May to September and can carry desert heat and sand over the station. Whichever wins on a given day nudges the reading.

Seasonality

There is no cool season, only "hot" and "very hot". January, the coolest month, still averages around 23-24°C and prints daytime highs near 30°C. Heat ramps through spring - roughly 32°C average highs in March rising toward 37°C by May - and summer daytime temperatures routinely exceed 40°C from May to October. The bands the market prices sit high and stay high; this is a city where the question is "how far above 35°C", not "will it be warm".

How to play this city

Read the wind regime, not just the thermometer. A strong dry Shamal day favours the upper bands - desert air and full sun let the airport run hot. A day dominated by the moist sea breeze tends to shave the very top off, because coastal marine air, even when sticky, moderates the raw maximum. In the deep summer the bands are so consistently high that the edge is in the margins between adjacent hot bands rather than in calling hot-versus-cool; in winter and the shoulder months, the day-to-day spread widens and the wind read matters more.

What's Next?

This is the template applied to three contrasting climates - a maritime cap (Amsterdam), a basin lid (Chengdu), and a coastal humidity engine (Jeddah). The same four-part read extends to every city with a live Polymarket temperature market. Keep going: