¿OCURREN OLAS DE CALOR EN CUBA?

Abstract

The Cuban population is adapted to the conditions of the tropical climate, but facing a future warmer scenario of the local climate, it will be necessary to consider the occurrence of very high temperatures, with the capacity to generate “heat waves” with specific meteor-pathological effects on the local population, including the increase of mortality. The relationship among the provincial mean air temperature of Villa Clara in the July-August period from 2001 to 2014 and the behavior of the synchronous daily data of general mortality was studied, being identified several periods of consecutive days with very high extreme air temperatures, in which a significant excess mortality was present. The exploratory analyses and the statistical correlations among the sums of temperatures for serial periods of 3, 5 and 7 days and the accumulated synchronous mortality improved in the same way that increased the longitude of the serial day period. It was demonstrated that the threshold of adaptation of the Cuban population to heat stress is higher than the limits reported in populations of middle and high latitudes, but over certain critical limits, the Cubans also suffers the occurrence of severe meteor-pathological effects due to intense heat stress, such as the increase of mortality. The analysis carried out demonstrated the existence of groups of days in some years with similar thermal régime conditions that occurs during heat waves. So, the possibility of occurrence of such impacts under the current and future conditions of the climate of Cuba and other Caribbean countries is certain.