Abnormally hot summer slowed down the work of stock exchanges in the US
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Since the end of June, the weather is unusually hot and humid on the East Coast and in the central states of the United States. This even affects the work of financial markets: journalists have found that data exchange between the largest US stock exchanges has noticeably slowed down.
Microsecond delays due to air humidity
The last two weeks for a number of countries turned out to be unusually hot: temperature records were broken in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and several states of Central Asia. In New York and New Jersey, high temperatures were accompanied by sixty percent humidity. The heat index, an indicator that takes into account both of these factors, on July 3, 2018 in these states was 40 ° C.
On this day, the Nasdaq reported that the increased air humidity interferes with radio transmissions between data centers. Sending information from the Nasdaq data center in Carteret (New Jersey) to the data center of the New York Stock Exchange in Mahwe was delayed by 8 microseconds, while at the data center CBOE in Secaucus - by two.
Since millions of fractions of seconds imperceptible to people in modern high-speed trading mean a lot, the exchange considered it necessary to inform its clients about the situation.
The economic consequences of extreme heat
An uncommonly hot and dry summer can have tangible economic consequences in less technological areas. High temperatures affect the well-being and working capacity of citizens, reduces agricultural productivity and can lead to large-scale fires.
Muscovites are well aware of the consequences of such natural phenomena: in the summer of 2010, due to the burning of the Moscow region peatlands, the city dragged smog for almost a month. At that time, more than a hundred flights were canceled, some international organizations and embassies temporarily suspended work in Moscow, and cultural events were postponed.
In 2018, in addition to the July fires in California and Colorado, the United States was confronted with another result of steady heat — a sharp rise in electricity prices. Its cause was the increase in electricity consumption for air conditioners and industrial cooling systems. July 4, 2018 in the United States was recorded the maximum consumption of electricity over the past two years.
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