Extreme heat risks to pregnancy driven by climate change: Central America and the Caribbean

2020 to 2024

We counted the number of days with temperatures warmer than 95% of temperatures observed at a given location (also referred to as temperatures above the 95th percentile) — a threshold which research1 shows can bring increased risk of preterm birth. We define these extremely hot days as “pregnancy heat-risk days.”

  • During 2020 to 2024, nearly all analyzed countries in Central America and the Caribbean (28 out of 32) experienced at least one additional months’ worth of pregnancy heat-risk days on average each year due to climate change.

  • Fourteen of these countries experienced at least two additional months’ worth of pregnancy heat-risk days each year on average, including the British Virgin Islands and U.S. Virgin Islands (72 days each), Saint Kitts and Nevis (70), and Anguilla (70).

  • In most Central American and Caribbean countries (29 out of 32), at least three-quarters of the average annual number of pregnancy heat-risk days were added by climate change. Meaning, in a world without climate change, those countries would have experienced far fewer days with extreme heat.

Explore data for countries and cities across Central America and the Caribbean
in the interactive maps below.


Countries with the most pregnancy heat-risk days added by climate change




Cities with the most pregnancy heat-risk days added by climate change



1We chose this percentile based on peer-reviewed research from Kuehn et al. (2017), Wang et al. (2013), Wang et al. (2024), and McElroy et al. (2022).