Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

A wet­ter rainy sea­son no longer guar­an­tees wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty, and a dri­er wet sea­son no longer means com­mu­ni­ties are safe from flood­ing.

As the re­gion pre­pares for an­oth­er hur­ri­cane sea­son, the coun­try may be en­ter­ing an era of “weath­er whiplash,” where pro­longed dry spells, flash floods and ex­treme heat can all oc­cur with­in the same sea­son.

For many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, that re­al­i­ty is al­ready fa­mil­iar.

Com­mu­ni­ties flood af­ter on­ly a few hours of rain­fall. Farm­ers strug­gle through dry pe­ri­ods dur­ing what should tra­di­tion­al­ly be the wet sea­son. Reser­voir lev­els fluc­tu­ate un­pre­dictably. Heat ad­vi­sories are be­com­ing more com­mon, while res­i­dents in­creas­ing­ly com­plain that the sea­sons no longer feel the way they once did.

That re­al­i­ty emerged dur­ing the Na­tion­al Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum host­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice at the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty Train­ing Cen­tre in Pi­ar­co on Wednes­day, where me­te­o­rol­o­gists, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and stake­hold­ers dis­cussed the ex­pec­ta­tions sur­round­ing the 2026 wet and hur­ri­cane sea­son.

Al­though the out­look calls for a near-nor­mal hur­ri­cane sea­son and be­low-nor­mal rain­fall for the coun­try, me­te­o­rol­o­gists cau­tioned against in­ter­pret­ing the fore­cast as a sign of re­duced dan­ger.

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist Ean Wal­lace said To­ba­go could face short-term drought con­di­tions be­tween June and Au­gust, even dur­ing the wet sea­son it­self.

“What that means is veg­e­ta­tion brown­ing, what that means is a low­er soil mois­ture,” Wal­lace said, ex­plain­ing that farm­ers may need to re­ly more heav­i­ly on ir­ri­ga­tion and wa­ter-har­vest­ing sys­tems if rain­fall deficits con­tin­ue.

For a twin-is­land state al­ready grap­pling with ris­ing food im­port costs and pres­sure on do­mes­tic agri­cul­ture, the prospect of dry spells dur­ing the rainy sea­son car­ries se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions be­yond weath­er alone.

Wal­lace said dry spells with­in the wet sea­son are be­com­ing more com­mon, point­ing to sim­i­lar con­di­tions ex­pe­ri­enced last year.

Yet, while some ar­eas may face drought-like con­di­tions, oth­ers re­main vul­ner­a­ble to se­vere flood­ing from short bursts of in­tense rain­fall.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Clyde El­der, ac­knowl­edged that de­spite on­go­ing riv­er clear­ing and drainage work across the coun­try, flood risks re­main.

“As much as we are do­ing, there will still be in­stances of flood­ing and flash flood­ing,” El­der said.

But ques­tions raised dur­ing the fo­rum al­so point­ed to broad­er con­cerns about whether the coun­try’s in­fra­struc­ture and state agen­cies are adapt­ing quick­ly enough to in­creas­ing­ly er­rat­ic cli­mate con­di­tions.

Asked whether agen­cies re­spon­si­ble for flood map­ping, drainage man­age­ment, emer­gency plan­ning and build­ing stan­dards were co­or­di­nat­ing ef­fec­tive­ly, El­der ad­mit­ted there was still room for im­prove­ment.

“Many a times, agen­cies op­er­ate in si­los,” he said while call­ing for stronger col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween agen­cies such as WASA, mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency.

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Shiv­an­na Sam, al­so ac­knowl­edged com­mu­ni­ties such as Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la have al­ready been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing more se­vere flood­ing linked to cli­mate change.

“Flood­ing is an is­sue that af­fects the en­tire coun­try, and es­pe­cial­ly in Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, we’ve been see­ing be­cause of the cli­mate change cri­sis, more in­ci­dents of flood­ing … they’ve been more ex­treme,” Sam said.

She said flood mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts, in­clud­ing dredg­ing rivers and clear­ing wa­ter­ways, have helped re­duce some im­pacts, while greater pub­lic aware­ness about im­prop­er garbage dis­pos­al has al­so im­proved drainage con­di­tions in some com­mu­ni­ties.

Guardian Me­dia al­so raised ques­tions about whether the Gov­ern­ment had quan­ti­fied the long-term eco­nom­ic costs as­so­ci­at­ed with re­peat­ed flood­ing and heat-re­lat­ed events over the past decade. While Sam de­ferred giv­ing de­tailed fig­ures, she said cli­mate adap­ta­tion mea­sures, in­clud­ing re­new­able en­er­gy ini­tia­tives and con­ser­va­tion ef­forts, re­main part of on­go­ing dis­cus­sions.

Still, an­oth­er is­sue emerged: pub­lic mis­un­der­stand­ing of cli­mate fore­casts.

Me­te­o­rol­o­gists, mean­while, ex­pressed con­cern that mem­bers of the pub­lic may mis­in­ter­pret terms such as “near-nor­mal” and “be­low-nor­mal” as signs that com­mu­ni­ties face re­duced risks this year.

Wal­lace stressed that sea­son­al fore­casts are prob­a­bilis­tic and can change as cli­mate con­di­tions evolve through the sea­son.

He al­so de­fend­ed the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice as the coun­try’s au­thor­i­ta­tive sci­en­tif­ic voice amid the grow­ing spread of un­of­fi­cial weath­er com­men­tary and spec­u­la­tion on so­cial me­dia.

“We still have to re­main on that sci­en­tif­ic stan­dard ba­sis,” Wal­lace said, not­ing that the agency op­er­ates with­in the frame­work of both the Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

For T&T me­te­o­rol­o­gists, the chal­lenge is no longer sim­ply pre­dict­ing storms.

It is help­ing the na­tion pre­pare for a re­al­i­ty where drought can de­vel­op dur­ing the wet sea­son, floods can oc­cur dur­ing be­low-nor­mal rain­fall years, and “nor­mal” weath­er pat­terns are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to de­fine.