UV Index 🇵🇦Panama

Panama is a narrow tropical isthmus stretching between roughly 7.2°N and 9.6°N, bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. Most of the country sits at low elevation, though the western cordillera rises to Volcán Barú at 3,475 m, the highest point in the country. Because of this equatorial latitude, the solar zenith angle stays small year-round and the noon Sun passes nearly overhead, giving Panama consistently high potential ultraviolet irradiance across all seasons (Wikipedia Geography of Panama; WHO UV fact sheet).

A distinctive feature of Panama's UV climate is its position near the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which drives persistent humidity and deep convective cloud cover for much of the year, attenuating noon UV during the long May–November rainy season. ETESA's Hidrometeorología service monitors solar and UV conditions across the isthmus. The Chiriquí highlands around Boquete, at roughly 1,200 m, sit above part of the marine boundary layer and tend to receive modestly higher clear-sky UV than the coastal lowlands (ETESA Hidrometeorología; WHO UV fact sheet).

Panama sits at #78 of 191 in the WHO's global ambient-UV ranking with about 4,898 J/m² of average daily UV, around the 59th percentile worldwide.