ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Caribbean weather forecasters began a two-day meeting here on Wednesday amid the warning that while the region is starting to feel some reprieve from the scorching weather over the last few months, the heat will be back within the next three months.
Climatologist at the Barbados-based Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), Dr. Cédric Van Meerbeeck, noted that the Caribbean is accustomed to heat but warned at the 2023-24 Dry Season Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CariCOF) that the higher temperatures are negatively impacting residents of the region.
“Cyclones and heat are hazards we feel, have felt, or know about. Now, heat, we also understand, is not just a normal thing in the Caribbean. It negatively affects us,” he told 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, adding, “We know that there are other things that are looming and that have started affecting us.
“Now, who cares about Sargassum? Who has to deal with Sargassum, right?” he highlighted the point, calling attention to the seaweed that is a significant problem on some Caribbean beaches, affecting tourism, fisheries, and recreation.
“There’s also seasonality of Sargassum bleaching in the Caribbean, but that only started in 2011; there are other hazards that we also need to look at.”
Van Meerbeeck said that to sum up climatological conditions in the region over the last few months, he would say, “Recently, it was hot.
“I don’t think anybody is doubting that anymore,” he said, noting the accuracy of the forecast issued at the wet season CariCOF in May, which coincides with the hurricane season.
In May, CIMH predicted 17 named storms, seven of which were likely to become hurricanes, four of which were significant storms this year.
However, Van Meerbeeck said then that the “boxing game” between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and Saharan dust over the Atlantic would determine the level of tropical cyclone activity.
On Wednesday, he said there were more tropical cyclones this season than usual.
“But we were fortunate enough this year that most of them avoided the islands. We know that’s only sometimes the case.
“But you also know that it takes just one,” he said, speaking in a country where five years earlier, Hurricane Maria destroyed 90 percent of the housing stock and left loss and damage amounting to 226 percent of the island’s gross domestic product (GDP).
“We are officially out of the hurricane season this month. But that doesn’t mean that there can’t be any impacting hurricane or tropical cyclone,” Van Meerbeeck said, adding that if Caribbean people did not think about the heat until last year, they certainly did so this year.
The climatologist noted that rainfall decreases as the dry season progresses but added that no heat waves are expected over the next three months.
“But lo and behold, if you look at the second part of the dry season, heat will return. It will return. Again, it will return,” Van Meerbeeck said.
He emphasized that the heat will not return merely because the region would not be yet into the wet or hurricane season, adding that for some Caribbean countries, such as Belize, the driest part of the year is also the hottest.
Van Meerbeeck said that in some parts of the region, there would be less water than is usually the case for that time of year, including in some parts of the Guianas, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago, which are expected to see drier-than-usual soils.
“There are places where we are seeing some concern growing, and that is Belize, Cuba, and Puerto Rico,” he said, referring to stress on water resources.
Van Meerbeeck said flooding has a high potential to occur, particularly in the Guinas -Suriname and French Guiana – because, as opposed to the Caribbean islands and Belize, the Guianas are entering their secondary wet season.
He said that while the Caribbean knows that the dry season is usually like, this year, the Atlantic Ocean was particularly 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 likened the situation to sweating as a human cooling mechanism, noting that while the Atlantic Ocean is cooling, it will remain warmer than usual.
“I repeat, is gonna remain warmer than usual,” Van Meerbeeck said, adding that a warm Atlantic Ocean means hotter temperatures in the air and more humidity.
“So towards the end of the dry season, the heating season is gonna say, ‘Hello, I’m back.'”
On the other hand, he said that the Pacific Ocean is suggesting the first strong El Nino since 2014-2016.
“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 said, returning to the “boxing match” analogy he used in the May CariCof.
“There are some ways in which the Atlantic Ocean temperatures and the Pacific Ocean are having a boxing game. And yes, both are the top fighters on earth.
“But you need to know prior who wins. So what we’ve experienced in the past few months is that the Atlantic dominated. Both of them bring more heat to the Caribbean. But it was not particularly dry because we have a lot of moisture in our atmosphere thanks to the evaporation from the warm Atlantic Ocean.
“What it looks like for the next few months is the boxing game was almost one was almost knocked out for El Niño with El Niño is fighting back.”
The climatologist said the hazard the region needs to look out for during the dry season is drought, adding that the forecast is for more rain than usual during the second three months of the dry season.
Van Meerbeeck said this could lead to flooding in some places, depending on the intensity of the rainfall.
“Now, unfortunately, here we only have a forecast map for the next three months, not for the three months after that,” he said, urging the region to pay attention to the information from their local meteorological services.
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