- Caribbean region to get only temporary reprieve from heat stress
Caribbean weather experts began a two-day meeting in Dominica on Wednesday, warning that while the region is beginning to find some relief from the exceptionally hot weather of the last few months, it will return within three months.
Dr. Cédric Van Meerbeeck, climatologist at the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) in Barbados, warned at the 2023 to 2024 Dry Season Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CariCOF) that higher temperatures are hurting Caribbean residents.
“Cyclones and heat are hazards we feel, have felt, or know about. Heat is not normal in the Caribbean; it hurts us, he warned delegates.
“So it’s time to stop thinking that the only thing about our climate that affects us is rain, flooding and hurricanes,” he said. “We know that other things are looming and have started affecting us.
Now who cares about sargassum? Who has to deal with Sargassum, right? The seaweed is a big problem on several Caribbean beaches, harming tourism, fisheries, and recreation.
There’s also seasonality of Sargassum bleaching in the Caribbean, but that started in 2011; we also need to consider other dangers.
Van Meerbeeck added, “Recently it was hot” to describe the region’s weather in recent months.
“I don’t think there’s anybody doubting that anymore,” he added of the May wet season CariCOF forecast, which overlaps with hurricane season.
In May, CIMH forecasted 17 named storms, seven of which would become hurricanes and four significant storms this year.
However, Van Meerbeeck added that the “boxing game” between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and Saharan dust over the Atlantic would influence tropical cyclone activity.
He claimed Wednesday that tropical cyclones were more frequent this season.
We were lucky this year that most avoided the islands. We know that’s not always true.
“But you also know that it takes just one,” he remarked in a country where Hurricane Maria destroyed 90% of the housing stock and cost 226 percent of the island’s GDP five years ago.
At the conclusion of the month, hurricane season ends. “But that doesn’t mean there can’t be any impacting hurricane or tropical cyclone,” Van Meerbeeck said, adding that Caribbean people considered the heat this year if not last year.
The climatologist said rainfall diminishes during the dry season, but no heat waves are forecast in the following three months.
“But heat will return in the second part of the dry season. It’ll return. Again, it will reappear, Van Meerbeeck added.
He added that in certain Caribbean countries, like Belize, the driest part of the year is also the hottest, so the heat would not return just because it is not hurricane season.
Van Meerbeeck warned that some sections of the Guianas, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago will have drier soils than usual for that time of year.
“We are seeing some concern growing and that is Belize, Cuba and Puerto Rico,” he added of water stress.
The Guianas, unlike the Caribbean islands and Belize, are approaching their secondary rainy season, therefore Van Meerbeeck warned of flooding, especially in Suriname and French Guiana.
He said the Caribbean understands what the dry season is like, but this year the Atlantic Ocean was extremely hot “and we felt the impacts of that because heat stress being a factor of both higher temperatures, but also more moisture, which comes from the ocean”.
Van Meerbeeck compared the Atlantic Ocean’s cooling to people’ sweating, saying it will remain warmer than usual.
“I repeat is gonna remain warmer than usual,” Van Meerbeeck said, adding that a warm Atlantic Ocean raises air temperatures and humidity.
“So at the end of the dry season, the heat season would say, ‘Hello I’m back,”
The Pacific Ocean suggests the first strong El Nino since 2014–2016, he said.
“Now I know my friend from Antigua can tell you that water availability in Antigua and Barbuda was a pretty big problem in those years,” he remarked, recalling the May CariCof “boxing match” comparison.
In some ways, Atlantic and Pacific Ocean temperatures are boxing. Both are the world’s best fighters.
One doesn’t know who wins beforehand. Over the past few months, the Atlantic dominated. Both heat up the Caribbean. The warm Atlantic Ocean evaporation keeps our atmosphere moist, therefore it wasn’t dry.
“Over the next three months, El Niño is rebounding from its near-death experience in the boxing game.
The scientist warned that drought is the region’s main dry season risk, and more rain is expected in the second three months.
Van Meerbeeck warned this could cause floods depending on rainfall severity.
“Now unfortunately here we only have a forecast map for the next three months, not for the three months after that,” he stated, advising the region to follow local meteorological agencies.
