To date, most historical research on the nineteenth-century Middle East has failed to recognize the parallels between ecological crises within the region extending from Asia Minor and Syria to Kurdistan and Iraq, and global climatic fluctuations. Indeed, most studies have treated recurrent environmental disasters in this region as singular events that resulted from local weather episodes. In contrast, this paper suggests that these recurrent drought and severe cold events were manifestations of a wider climatic pattern affecting the region as a whole. However, a better understanding of these events requires a more comparative and global approach to climate. By investigating the connection between local weather anomalies and global climatic shifts as they relate to El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in the nineteenth-century Middle East, I argue that recurrent episodes of drought and other extreme conditions are not singular weather events. Rather, they were synchronized with global climatic patterns. Drawing from Ottoman and British archives, as well as existing climatic and dendrochronological studies, this paper examines the parallels and contrasts between “local” Middle Eastern weather anomalies and global climatic oscillations.