Dr C James Hospedales

jameshospedales@earth­medic.org

In Ju­ly 2024, Hur­ri­cane Beryl tore through Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Ja­maica and Mex­i­co, and went on to hit Texas and sev­er­al oth­er US states. Beryl was the ear­li­est Cat­e­go­ry Five storm on record.

T&T and the Caribbean is­lands are in a wa­tery part of the world, prone to storms and hur­ri­canes, but as hu­man-caused cli­mate change ad­vances, hur­ri­canes are be­hav­ing dif­fer­ent­ly. They in­ten­si­fy faster, are stronger, wet­ter, and last longer. Com­bined with oth­er fac­tors like ris­ing sea lev­els, hur­ri­canes are caus­ing more dam­age, de­struc­tion, in­jury and death.

Low-in­come com­mu­ni­ties, those liv­ing near coasts, peo­ple with chron­ic health prob­lems, and the hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres need­ed for dis­as­ter re­lief are all vul­ner­a­ble. Stay­ing in­formed and be­ing pre­pared are es­sen­tial to re­duce deaths, suf­fer­ing and dam­age.

Hur­ri­canes now get stronger faster, so you have less time to re­act. To imag­ine this, sup­pose you are play­ing crick­et and bat­ting. If you face a spin bowler and ex­pect a slow ball at 40 MPH, you think you will have time to re­act. But af­ter a short run-up, the bowler de­liv­ers a ball of 100 MPH, rock­ing you back with lit­tle time to re­act! Sim­i­lar­ly, Beryl jumped from trop­i­cal storm strength to ma­jor hur­ri­cane with winds ex­ceed­ing 130 MPH in just 24 hours. A key in­gre­di­ent for rapid in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion is warm wa­ter, mean­ing ocean sur­face tem­per­a­tures of above 27 de­grees Cel­sius.

A hur­ri­cane forms when en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions are right, par­tic­u­lar­ly when sea sur­face tem­per­a­tures are warm. It is not com­mon­ly re­alised that 90 per cent of ex­cess heat from burn­ing fos­sil fu­els like oil and gas is stored in our oceans. Warm seas are the fu­el that hur­ri­canes need, and the last 12 months have been the hottest on record, caus­ing record high sea sur­face tem­per­a­tures. Thus, hur­ri­canes now tend to have high­er wind speeds, so they can cause more dam­age and de­struc­tion. Ex­perts aren’t sure whether we will get more fre­quent storms and hur­ri­canes, but re­search shows that hur­ri­canes are get­ting stronger, faster.

Hur­ri­canes and trop­i­cal storms now tend to be wet­ter, mean­ing that rain­fall lev­els are high­er than in the past. With glob­al warm­ing, there is more evap­o­ra­tion of sea­wa­ter, so there is more mois­ture in the air, which must come down some­where as rain or snow. Trop­i­cal Storm Eri­ka in Sep­tem­ber 2015 in Do­mini­ca demon­strat­ed this phe­nom­e­non when 15” of rain fell overnight. This caused mas­sive flood­ing and land­slides which swept away big hous­es, whole vil­lages, farms, roads and bridges, re­sult­ing in 33 deaths. Thus, be­sides wind speed, pay­ing at­ten­tion to ex­pect­ed rain­fall lev­els is im­por­tant.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, hur­ri­canes now tend to linger so they pound you for longer. Imag­ine box­ing against the heavy­weight “Iron” Mike Tyson. You might sur­vive a minute, but if you try to fight 10 rounds, you will like­ly die. Cli­mate mod­els show that as the world warms, trop­i­cal hur­ri­canes will trav­el more slow­ly, dump­ing more rain in one place and bat­ter­ing build­ings and trees with high-speed winds for longer.

Hur­ri­cane Do­ri­an, which hit The Ba­hamas on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2019, was an ex­am­ple, sit­ting over Aba­co and Grand Ba­hama is­lands for over 36 hours, re­sult­ing in over 70 deaths and over 200 per­sons miss­ing. It was the most dev­as­tat­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ter ever to hit The Ba­hamas.

Mak­ing mat­ters worse, glob­al sea lev­els are ris­ing be­cause of glob­al warm­ing from cli­mate change, boost­ing storm surges and in­creas­ing coastal flood risk. A storm surge is a rise in sea lev­el that oc­curs dur­ing hur­ri­canes. Cli­mate change wors­ens storm surge through its im­pacts on storm in­ten­si­ty as big­ger, stronger storms can push waves up to 5m high fur­ther on­shore. Hu­man be­hav­iour, like de­for­est­ing hill­sides and dump­ing garbage in rivers, both in­crease runoff from the land while re­duc­ing the abil­i­ty of flood wa­ter to drain.

Hur­ri­canes are chang­ing be­hav­iour as hu­man-caused cli­mate change wors­ens, but should we fling up our hands and take licks? No. Every man jack can get box­ing gloves or de­vel­op re­flex­es to beat the spin bowler, while in the longer term, we need to tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­el use, which is caus­ing cli­mate change. In the short term, we need bet­ter ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems, and to lis­ten to the ad­vice from the Met Ser­vice and the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment.

Don’t as­sume when you hear it’s ‘on­ly a Cat­e­go­ry 1 storm’ that it won’t be bad, be­cause it can be­come a dead­ly Cat­e­go­ry 5 al­most overnight. Don’t dump rub­bish and old ap­pli­ances in­to rivers. Make a plan for your fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing writ­ing down or pro­gram­ming emer­gency phone num­bers in­to your cell phone. Pre­pare an emer­gency sup­ply kit in­clud­ing your med­i­cines. Have a plan for evac­u­a­tion if nec­es­sary. Learn about your sur­round­ings and flood-prone ar­eas, es­cape routes and high­er ground. Take mea­sures to pro­tect your home and be­long­ings. Stay in­formed and stay safe.

Key re­source: Chap­ter-1_Ex­treme-weath­er-events_Re­search-for-Ac­tion-on-Cli­mate-Change-and-Health-in-the-Caribbean_2024.pdf (earth­medic.com)

The fol­low­ing was a week­ly col­umn by Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse NGO to equip read­ers to face the cli­mate and health cri­sis.