Cuba Records Hottest Month Since 1951, Straining Electric Grid

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba in July recorded its hottest month since 1951, officers mentioned, with the hovering temperatures on land and sea straining the nation’s decrepit electrical grid and pressuring fragile ocean assets.

The typical temperature in July hit 29.1 levels Celsius (84.38 levels Farenheit), Cuba’s Meteorological Institute mentioned. The earlier report on the Caribbean island, recognized for its sultry summers, was set in August 2020.

Sea floor temperatures, too, have soared across the Caribbean and the tropical Atlantic Ocean, Cuban officers mentioned, boosting the prospects for the event of tropical storms and hurricanes by means of November.

Cuban meteorologists count on 13 named storms throughout this 12 months’s hurricane season, up barely from a earlier forecast in Might of 11.

The U.S. Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned earlier this month that the hotter water round Florida might supercharge tropical storms and hurricanes, which construct extra vitality over hotter waters.

The balmy ocean round Cuba additionally contributes to preserving night-time temperatures over land uncomfortably heat on the island, depriving residents of sleep and elevating tensions in a rustic already laid low with meals, gasoline and medication shortages.

The floor ocean temperature in and across the Florida Keys, simply 100 miles north of Cuba, reached typical sizzling tub ranges in late July, killing off coral and stressing sealife. Cuba’s coral reefs have additionally suffered from rising temperatures, scientists have mentioned.

The rising frequency and depth of extreme climate – each on land and in oceans – is symptomatic of worldwide, human-driven local weather change that’s fueling extremes, specialists within the discipline say, with heatwaves anticipated to persist by means of August.

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Enhancing by Angus MacSwan)

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