August 16, 2024
Much of Iran has been sweltering under a massive heat wave this summer, with Ahvaz, always a center of oppressive heat, recording daily highs of at least 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) on seven days before July 12, with the hottest days of summer still to come.
cities in southern Iran are reporting highs exceeding 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) on many afternoons. The place to avoid was Shabankareh, a small town in Bushehr province on the Persian Gulf coast where the thermometer recorded 54.2 degrees Celsius (129.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 11. Tehran has yet to break its all-time high of 109 degrees Fahrenheit, with the hottest days of the year so far being 108 degrees on August 7 and 8. In the six weeks from July 4 through August 15, only 12 days saw a high under 100 degrees.
what may be even worse, especially for those without air conditioning, has been the fact that the air often does not cool down that much at night. For example, on August 6, the overnight low was an anything-but-cool 88 degrees in the capital. The multiple heat waves have ravaged the south more than the north, where grueling humidity generally adds to the pain of temperatures that are often well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
On July 28, Esfahan hit 112 degrees, the highest temperature by far since the establishment of a weather station there in 1951. According to the weather website Ogimet, the highest temperature for any city in the world on July 27 was Tabas at a sweltering 120 degrees. The next day, Ogimet said the hottest city in the world that day was Zabol at 121 degrees.
On August 9, the three hottest cities in the world were all in Iran: Dezful at 121.1 degrees Fahrenheit, Omidiyeh in Khuzestan at 120.7 degrees, and Tabas in South Khorasan at 119.8 degrees. This all puts a tremendous strain on the electrical grid, as the country does not generate enough electricity to take care of air conditioning demands atop everything else.
The government’s response has primarily been three-fold: 1) calling on the public to use less electricity; 2) reducing the supply of power to many industries by half, which naturally slashes output and impacts the economy; and 3) ordering banks and government offices to operate only from 6-10 a.m. on the hottest days, so that no government offices are operating air conditioning in the hottest hours of the day. This still does not stop power outages.
The media says very little about power outages, presumably on the orders of the censors, but many citizens report suffering through them quite frequently. In previous years, it was common for the electrical authority to publish tables showing what districts in cities would have the power cut at what hours. But not this year. This produces added strains like that suffered by a merchant who said the power was cut just before his closing hour, so he had to sit in his shop for hours until the power came back on and he could get his shutters down.
Hamid-Reza Ghaznavi, secretary general of the Entrepreneurs Association, told Khabar Online August 8 that the power cuts for industries are not uniform. “Some industries have been shut down for two months. Others operate only at night, and some alternate between two weeks of operation and two weeks of shutdown.” He said the steel and textile industries have been hit especially hard.
The petrochemical industry is said to be doing well because the large petrochemical plants commonly generate their own electricity. In the capital, May was comfortable, as it usually is. The first day of the year to see a temperature at 90 or above in Tehran was May 27 that ushered in a never-ending hot spell. For the rest of the summer, the daily high was only below 90 degrees one day, on June 5, when it hit 88 degrees.
July was worse. The first 100-degree day of the year was July 4. And on 17 days in July the temperature was 100 degrees or more, with a high for the month of 107 degrees on July 27. The lowest high in July was 95 degrees on July 1. Energy Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian admitted the national grid was under strain while avoiding saying anything about the extent of power failures across the country.
On August 4, he said, “The pattern of rising energy consumption keeps repeating itself, as this year’s peak demand has already surpassed last year’s on 23 days, making it challenging for the power industry to keep up with demand.” Commentators have said the power problem stems from four sources. First, the government has had a goal of raising power output by 7 percent annually, but has only averaged 4.7 percent a year the last 10 years.
Second, power-generating stations are largely inefficient and just can’t produce all they are designed to produce. Third, the transmission and distribution system is poorly organized and managed, resulting in a loss of 13 percent of the power generated before it reaches customers. All countries suffer transmission losses, but 13 percent is abnormally high. (The global average is 5 to 7 percent.) Fourth, the ongoing drought has reduced the volume of water in reservoirs behind dams that generate power.
That means the dams are now producing only about half of what they were designed to generate. Unmentioned is the fact that electricity is cheap in Iran and few make any effort to conserve it. The media has started publishing data not only on the hottest spots in the country but also on the coolest spots, in a seeming effort to make people feel better. (For example, the Ardebil airport reported an overnight low of 48 degrees Fahrenheit July 19.) There have even been photos of snowplows in the mountains clearing away an occasional snowfall.
