🇨🇺Cuba

Cuba spans 19°50′–23°15′N as the largest island in the Caribbean, covering approximately 109,884 km² in an elongated archipelago that stretches 1,250 km west to east at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. The terrain consists mostly of low rolling plains and karst hills including the Sierra de los Órganos and Sierra de Trinidad, with the Sierra Maestra in the southeast rising to Pico Turquino at 1,974 m, the country's highest peak.

The climate is uniformly tropical savanna Aw at low elevations across the bulk of the island, with smaller pockets of tropical monsoon Am on the wettest mountain slopes and a temperate or oceanic Cfa influence on the higher peaks, while the Bay of Cienfuegos and Guantánamo lee experience drier Köppen-BSh tendencies.

Havana averages 22°C in January and 28°C in July with approximately 1,200 mm of rainfall sharply split between a wet season from May to October and a dry winter. Santiago de Cuba in the southeast lee is hotter and drier with around 1,000 mm annually, while Pinar del Río in the wet west receives 1,500–1,800 mm and the Sierra Maestra slopes receive up to 2,500 mm.

Cuba lies within the Atlantic hurricane belt and has experienced direct landfalls from six major hurricanes since 1963: Flora, Michelle, Wilma, Ike, Irma (Category 5 in 2017), and Ian (2022). Cold fronts descending from higher latitudes periodically reach the western provinces in winter, briefly lowering surface temperatures to around 5°C.

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) exerts a strong influence on winter rainfall distribution and hurricane frequency. Rising sea levels, increasing coral bleaching, and storm surge hazards pose growing environmental stress to the shallow cayos and densely populated north coast.

Our archive covers 31 Cuban cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940. The warmest July averages occur in Guantánamo, around 33.8°C, while Santa Clara records the coldest January nights near 17.8°C. Comparing the last decade against the 1940–1970 baseline, mean temperatures across these cities have risen by about 0.7°C.