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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Regional forecasters warn of another year of climate extremes

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220 days ago
20241129
This image published in the St Vincent Times, and dated November 19, 2024, shows a landslide/landslip threatening the stability of house, following an extreme weather event. [Image by JASON RODRIGUEZ/St Vincent Times]

This image published in the St Vincent Times, and dated November 19, 2024, shows a landslide/landslip threatening the stability of house, following an extreme weather event. [Image by JASON RODRIGUEZ/St Vincent Times]

Caribbean coun­tries are be­ing told that 2025 is like­ly to be an­oth­er year of cli­mate ex­tremes, with re­gion­al fore­cast­ers not­ing that 2024 has been a year of ex­tremes, in keep­ing with their fore­cast ear­li­er in the year.

Speak­ing at the 2024-25 Dry Sea­son Caribbean Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum (Cari­COF), cli­ma­tol­o­gist at the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean In­sti­tute for Me­te­o­rol­o­gy and Hy­drol­o­gy (CIMH), Dr. Cé­dric Van Meer­beeck said that con­di­tions are ide­al for 2025 to be an­oth­er suc­ces­sive year of cli­mate ex­tremes in the re­gion.

He said the tem­per­a­tures have been record high for most of 2023 and this year, both in the ocean and in the at­mos­phere, adding that ocean heat gives cli­mate pre­dictabil­i­ty for the next sea­son.

“We are very well able to fore­cast the change in the amount of heat in the ocean, and there­fore, in some cas­es, we are quite con­fi­dent in fore­casts of our cli­mate con­di­tions,” he said.

He not­ed that a graph­ic de­pict­ing land and ocean tem­per­a­ture per­centiles in Oc­to­ber 2024 from the US-based Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Na­tion­al Cen­ters for En­vi­ron­men­tal In­for­ma­tion shows var­i­ous shades of red.

“Dark red means it’s been record warmest in … Oc­to­ber. Red­dish means it’s still been much warmer than av­er­age,” Van Meer­beeck said.

“I hope you can all see — and it’s not just my glass­es — that there has been near record warm pret­ty much every­where,” he said.

He added that while re­gion­al fore­cast­ers are most­ly con­cerned with tem­per­a­tures in the At­lantic Ocean, the Pa­cif­ic Ocean is al­so a con­sid­er­a­tion.

He said the Pa­cif­ic be­gan the year with El Ni­no, which added a lot of heat in­to the at­mos­phere.

“And now we tran­si­tioned in­to its cold coun­ter­part in the Pa­cif­ic, hope­ful­ly not a strong La Ni­na,” the cli­ma­tol­o­gist said, adding that La Ni­na con­di­tions have the op­po­site ef­fect on the Caribbean cli­mate.

“El Ni­no is a dri­ver of drought, is a dri­ver of in­creas­ing tem­per­a­tures over the year, and is a dri­ver of re­duced trop­i­cal cy­clone ac­tiv­i­ty. La Ni­na is the op­po­site.”

He said that in the At­lantic Ocean, from where most of the en­er­gy to form Caribbean weath­er sys­tems comes, “tem­per­a­tures are still record warm and still ex­pect­ed to re­main near record warm.”

“So we have still near record warm heat in the next sea­son in the At­lantic, and that is ex­act­ly what brought us a year of ex­tremes in 2024,” Van Meer­beeck ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he not­ed there are some un­knowns as some vari­ables are un­pre­dictable or can­not be fore­cast on a sea­son­al timescale.

“And one of those un­knowns that has been an un­known al­so be­fore the hur­ri­cane sea­son, is how of­ten does dry air from the Sa­hara, which of­ten brings us dusty con­di­tions … sti­fle show­er ac­tiv­i­ty in the Caribbean.”

He said that while fore­cast­ers can­not fore­cast Sa­ha­ran dust more than two weeks in ad­vance, his­tor­i­cal av­er­ages in­di­cate that the peak of the dust sea­son is be­tween May and Ju­ly.

The cli­ma­tol­o­gist said the 2024 wet/hur­ri­cane sea­son was in­tense, es­pe­cial­ly the lat­ter part of the sea­son.

“… and we’re ex­pect­ing it to be pro­longed by sev­er­al weeks, so at least un­til the end of the year, in­clud­ing Christ­mas,” he said, and re­mind­ed the fo­rum of the 2013 Christ­mas Eve floods.

“Let’s be on the look­out for weath­er,” he urged. “Please keep mon­i­tor­ing so that it doesn’t take you by sur­prise.”

Van Meer­beeck said that in the dry sea­son, the north­west Caribbean — Ba­hamas, Cu­ba, Cay­man Is­lands, and to a cer­tain ex­tent the Greater An­tilles — “need to be on the look­out for the dri­est con­di­tions of this dry sea­son”.

The chance of flash floods and flood-pro­duc­ing ex­treme rain­fall will sharply in­crease to­wards the end of the dry sea­son.

Van Meer­beeck said that while some Caribbean res­i­dents are yet to be fa­mil­iar with the term “heat sea­son”, this is a re­al­i­ty in the re­gion.

“… but from April or May un­til Oc­to­ber, we now have a heat sea­son. That heat sea­son is when our heat waves oc­cur,” he said, adding that the 2024 heat sea­son start­ed ear­ly.

“… for next year, it’s ex­pect­ed to start ear­ly again. It used to be on­ly one or two months brought heat waves back in the 90s. Then it be­came six months in the 2010s. Now we’re al­ready at sev­en or eight months. That’s the flavour of cli­mate change in the Caribbean,” Van Meer­beeck said.

He said the CIMH, re­gion­al me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices and their oth­er part­ners mon­i­tor nine cat­e­gories of haz­ards.

These are trop­i­cal cy­clones, plu­vial/river­ine flood­ing, surg­ing/coastal flood­ing, ex­ces­sive dry­ness, fire weath­er, ex­ces­sive heat, coral reef bleach­ing, Sa­ha­ran dust in­tru­sion, and Sar­gas­sum beach­ing.

He not­ed: “… haz­ards oc­cur all year round. And we can pre­pare, and we should pre­pare for that.”

The cli­ma­tol­o­gist said the most ram­pant haz­ards in the dry sea­son in­clude the ob­vi­ous ef­fects of ex­ces­sive dry­ness in­clud­ing short- and long-term drought.

“But we’re al­so think­ing re­cur­rent dry spells, which are dele­te­ri­ous to crop growth in par­tic­u­lar parts of their crop cy­cle. We’re think­ing fire weath­er,” he said, adding that ex­ces­sive dry­ness and fire weath­er are ex­pect­ed to be max­i­mum around March.

“But then, de­pend­ing on how of­ten we’re go­ing to get dust, af­ter that, the dry­ness could con­tin­ue a bit longer,” he said, re­fer­ring to Sa­ha­ran dust in­tru­sion.

Van Meer­beeck said that if dust in­tru­sion comes less of­ten than usu­al, the wet sea­son is ex­pect­ed to come in “a lit­tle bit quick­er”.

He said the heat sea­son nor­mal­ly starts around April or May, adding that there were a num­ber of heat­waves in March, and this might be re­peat­ed in 2025.

“… so that leaves us with a cool sea­son that’s on­ly three months long, and even that sea­son will be warmer than usu­al, prob­a­bly, but at least more com­fort­able,” he ob­served.

Van Meer­beeck said this might not be good for crops like toma­toes, which need a lot of con­trast be­tween night­time and day­time tem­per­a­tures.

“But it will still be more com­fort­able for our health, less dan­ger­ous.”

Mean­while, Van Meer­beeck not­ed that coral reef bleach­ing re­acts to heat in the ocean, adding that the heat in the ocean takes time to ac­cu­mu­late.

“So even though the ocean tem­per­a­tures are fi­nal­ly start­ing to go down a lit­tle bit,” he said, “coral reef bleach­ing will still con­tin­ue for an­oth­er month or so.”

Van Meer­beeck point­ed out that Sar­gas­sum beach­ing has be­come a haz­ardous con­di­tion since 2011.

“… right now, the good news is there’s vir­tu­al­ly no Sar­gas­sum in the west­ern trop­i­cal At­lantic, but there are big mats of Sar­gas­sum loom­ing in the east­ern At­lantic,” he said.

“The ques­tion is: Are they go­ing to come across and lead to a big bloom sea­son next year or not? We don’t know yet,” the cli­ma­tol­o­gist ad­mit­ted. “So, there are some things we will come to know in the next few months.”

Mean­while, CIMH agro-metrol­o­gist Adri­an Trot­man, told the fo­rum that the re­gion­al in­sti­tute was ac­cu­rate in its out­look for the 2024 wet and hur­ri­cane sea­sons.

“… these sea­sons of­fer two to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent chal­lenges to the re­gion. You can imag­ine that when we say … wet and hur­ri­cane sea­son, the hur­ri­canes tend to stand out,” he point­ed out.

“But if you ask some peo­ple—in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Grena­da, and Trinidad and To­ba­go—in re­cent times, [it] doesn’t have to be a hur­ri­cane to be hor­rif­ic,” Trot­mas said, re­fer­ring to the heavy rains that trig­ger land­slides and flood­ing in those south­east­ern Caribbean na­tions.

“… we’re near­ing the end of a very in­ter­est­ing year — 2024,” he ob­served.  “As the year 2023 was ap­proach­ing its end and in­to ear­ly 2024, we dubbed 2024 as a year of ex­tremes.”

“It start­ed ear­ly in the year with that chal­lenge of the dry sea­son, where in some parts of the Caribbean, it was even dri­er than nor­mal,” Trot­man re­count­ed.

He said the re­gion pre­pared for three sig­nif­i­cant cli­mate chal­lenges like the wet and hur­ri­cane sea­sons.

“The one that fol­lowed us from last year was noth­ing to do with wet, noth­ing to do with ex­treme winds, but heat …” Trot­man said, adding that air con­di­tion­ing units and fans sold out in some coun­tries, where fans were “just blow­ing hot air”.

“Even dur­ing the cool­er sea­son, it felt some­times un­com­fort­able, and that cool­er sea­son seemed to end ear­li­er than we would have hoped.”

Trot­man said 2023 was, “a record year [for] tem­per­a­tures, and word is that 2024, up un­til No­vem­ber, is chal­leng­ing 2023 to be the new record.”

“Were we pre­pared de­spite be­ing warned?” Trot­man asked. 

He not­ed that as mid-No­vem­ber ap­proached, some Caribbean res­i­dents might have been ask­ing about the ex­treme hur­ri­cane sea­son that had been fore­cast.

“… some peo­ple were lucky to es­cape Beryl. Some of us weren’t,” he point­ed out. “But cer­tain­ly, if you ask per­sons in the west­ern por­tions of the Caribbean in par­tic­u­lar, in­clud­ing Flori­da, they don’t share your voice at all.”

“For them, it was a hor­ri­ble sea­son, and we did reach with­in that range of ex­treme that we re­fer to in our fore­cast. So, it was an ex­treme hur­ri­cane sea­son. We were much luck­i­er in this part of the world be­cause of the way things pe­tered out with re­spect to the tim­ing,” Trot­man said. —CAS­TRIES, St. Lu­cia (CMC)

_______

Sto­ry by Ken­ton X. Chance | CMC


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