An­talya, Türkiye: When heavy rain floods streets in Trinidad and To­ba­go or pro­longed dry weath­er threat­ens wa­ter sup­plies, one thing can make a crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence: how ear­ly com­mu­ni­ties are warned.

But as the world braces for an ex­cep­tion­al­ly pow­er­ful El Niño, the head of the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WMO) is warn­ing that Caribbean coun­tries need greater in­vest­ment in the equip­ment and in­fra­struc­ture re­quired to pro­tect lives.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the COP31 cli­mate sum­mit in An­talya, Türkiye, WMO sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ce­leste Saulo ex­pressed strong con­fi­dence in the Caribbean’s me­te­o­rol­o­gists, while ac­knowl­edg­ing the chal­lenges con­fronting re­gion­al weath­er ser­vices.

“I’m ex­treme­ly con­fi­dent in CMO (Caribbean Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­gan­i­sa­tion) ca­pac­i­ty in terms of hu­man ca­pac­i­ty. We have great ex­perts,” she said, prais­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion among Caribbean coun­tries as an ex­am­ple for the world. How­ev­er, ex­per­tise alone is not enough.

“My con­cern is how we can mo­bilise more re­sources to sup­port these coun­tries that are do­ing a su­per great ef­fort,” Saulo ex­plained.

“They have their Met ser­vices in place, work­ing very hard, but they need more in­fra­struc­ture, sus­tain­able in­fra­struc­ture.”

Her com­ments come as the Caribbean Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Coun­cil (CMC) pre­pares to meet this week in Turks and Caicos, with radar sys­tems, staffing and oth­er op­er­a­tional chal­lenges among the con­cerns to be raised.

A hot­ter world, big­ger risks

The warn­ing co­in­cides with alarm­ing find­ings from the WMO’s State of the Cli­mate Up­date 2026, re­leased Mon­day at COP31.

The re­port con­firms that the past four years have been the hottest on record, with glob­al tem­per­a­tures be­tween Jan­u­ary and Sep­tem­ber av­er­ag­ing 1.47 de­grees Cel­sius above pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els.

Ocean heat and sea lev­els have al­so reached record highs, while the pow­er­ful El Niño is ex­pect­ed to in­flu­ence weath­er pat­terns well in­to 2027.

At the COP31 press con­fer­ence, Saulo de­scribed the de­vel­op­ing event as un­prece­dent­ed.

“This 2026-2027 El Ni­no is off the charts. It is dif­fer­ent from any El Ni­no that we have mon­i­tored,” she warned.

Ob­ser­va­tions al­ready show chang­ing rain­fall pat­terns in the re­gion that have al­ready be­gun to com­pli­cate wa­ter man­age­ment, af­fect agri­cul­ture and in­crease pres­sure on house­holds al­ready vul­ner­a­ble to flood­ing or wa­ter short­ages. Yet these are po­ten­tial risks, not a pre­dic­tion that El Niño will bring flood­ing or drought to every Caribbean is­land.

Cli­mate change is

al­so a health cri­sis

UN Cli­mate Change ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary Si­mon Stiell told the press con­fer­ence that ris­ing tem­per­a­tures are in­creas­ing­ly threat­en­ing hu­man health.

“The cli­mate cri­sis is now a glob­al health cri­sis of pan­dem­ic pro­por­tions,” he warned, point­ing to ex­treme heat, pol­lu­tion and cli­mate dis­as­ters plac­ing pres­sure on health sys­tems.

For T&T, that rais­es con­cerns about heat ex­po­sure, par­tic­u­lar­ly for out­door work­ers, old­er cit­i­zens and vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies.

Saulo al­so high­light­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­creased dengue and oth­er mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease risks as chang­ing weath­er con­di­tions af­fect pub­lic health.

Well­come Trust cli­mate and health di­rec­tor Alan Dun­go warned that gov­ern­ments must in­vest in pre­ven­tion rather than face greater costs af­ter dis­as­ters.

“Heat ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems are al­ready pre­vent­ing deaths from ex­treme weath­er events and adap­ta­tion mea­sures will save lives,” he said.

The Caribbean’s

ur­gent chal­lenge

Saulo wants ex­pand­ed weath­er ob­ser­va­tion net­works and stronger ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems through­out the Caribbean, sup­port­ed by the WMO and ex­ist­ing re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion.

Her call comes as COP31 ne­go­tia­tors face grow­ing pres­sure to trans­late cli­mate com­mit­ments in­to prac­ti­cal as­sis­tance for vul­ner­a­ble na­tions.

For T&T, the ques­tion is no longer sim­ply whether the cli­mate is chang­ing. It is whether the coun­try and its Caribbean neigh­bours will have the equip­ment, fi­nanc­ing and warn­ing sys­tems need­ed to pre­pare com­mu­ni­ties be­fore se­vere weath­er strikes. Be­cause when the next weath­er emer­gency comes, a warn­ing de­liv­ered in time could mean the dif­fer­ence be­tween pro­tect­ing a home and los­ing every­thing.