KALAIN HO­SEIN

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

The 2022 Dry Sea­son has of­fi­cial­ly start­ed ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice.

The Met Of­fice said com­pared to last year’s record-break­ing wet­ter than usu­al dry sea­son, the 2022 Dry Sea­son is like­ly to pro­duce less rain­fall than usu­al over­all, with be­low-av­er­age to­tals most like­ly.

With less rain­fall than usu­al, there will be re­duced sur­face wa­ter flows and rain-fed wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty. In ad­di­tion, with an in­crease in sur­face dry­ness as the sea­son pro­gress­es, there will be an in­creased po­ten­tial for bush/grass/for­est and land­fill fires, which can de­te­ri­o­rate the air qual­i­ty and stress per­sons with sen­si­tive res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the Met Of­fice, on­go­ing cli­mat­ic pat­terns/fea­tures, in­clud­ing the dom­i­nance of up­per-lev­el west­er­ly winds over the re­gion, an in­ten­si­fied North At­lantic Sub-Trop­i­cal High-Pres­sure sys­tem that has ex­pand­ed its reach­es south­ward and deep­er in­to the at­mos­phere, com­pared to two weeks ago, along with a strength­ened trade-wind in­ver­sion, which serves to lim­it deep clouds de­vel­op­ment, are present. To­geth­er, this con­fig­u­ra­tion sig­nals that the re­gion has tran­si­tioned to its dri­er state, which is gen­er­al­ly man­i­fest­ed by re­duced mois­ture, in­creased sta­bil­i­ty, few­er deep clouds, less fre­quent rain­fall, cool­er tem­per­a­tures, and stronger sur­face winds.

The 2022 Dry Sea­son out­look in­di­cates slight­ly dri­er than usu­al con­di­tions are favoured with be­low-av­er­age rain­fall most like­ly but Feb­ru­ary to April is like­ly to be the dri­est pe­ri­od. The out­look al­so calls for warmer than av­er­age day and night tem­per­a­tures, but a few rel­a­tive­ly chilly nights are ex­pect­ed, when tem­per­a­tures will fall be­low 20.0°C due to rel­a­tive­ly cold­er air be­ing fun­nelled in­to the re­gion from the sub-trop­i­cal high-pres­sure sys­tem and mi­grat­ing weath­er sys­tems from cold­er lat­i­tudes.

The coun­try is al­so like­ly to see an in­crease in the fre­quen­cy of haz­ardous sea con­di­tions, Sa­ha­ran dust-haze events, and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions that in­crease bush/grass/for­est and land­fill fires.