CariCOF Warns El Niño is Strengthening and Water Around the Caribbean is Steadily Warming
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – The Barbados-based Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CariCOF) Thursday said that during the portion of the three-month Caribbean wet season, El Niño is strengthening and water around the Caribbean is steadily warming.
El Niño is a climate pattern where the surface water in the tropical Pacific Ocean becomes much warmer than usual. This warming changes the winds globally and disrupts normal weather patterns, causing extreme events like heavy rainfall, droughts, and heatwaves.
In its latest Caribbean Climate Outlooks publication, CariCOF said that could imply increasingly intense humid heat into the peak of the heat season in September, culminating in recurrent heatwaves, especially in the far north as well as irregular bouts of Atlantic Hurricane Season activity through August, likely followed by somewhat muted peak season activity in September.
In addition, CariCOF says during the July to August period there will be slower than usual alleviation of lingering drought into September in the Lesser Antilles and slower than usual increase in rainfall frequency than in most years.
It warned that the expected occurrence of excessive rainfall events will lead “to high to extremely high potential for flooding, flash floods, cascading hazards and associated impacts.
“Intrusions of dusty Saharan air will likely be frequent, inhibiting tropical cyclone activity, but exacerbating humid heat and deteriorating air quality,” it added.
CariCOF said that up to the month of September, the potential for flooding, flash floods, related hazards and compound or cascading impacts due to excessive rains will be high to extremely high in most areas except the Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao (ABC) Islands.
It said water recharge rates in surface reservoirs and rivers will likely be slower than usual in Belize and the Antilles and that a slower than usual increase in wet days into August dampens the increase in rainfall disruptions of outdoor activities, only slowly builds up soil moisture and reduces wildfire potential, but also reduces the prevalence of moisture.
As of June 1 this year, severe or worse, short-term drought has developed in southwest Tobago and western Barbados with long-term drought being recorded in easternmost Cuba, Grenada, easternmost Guadeloupe, southwest Jamaica, Martinique, southwest Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and southeast Suriname.
CariCOF said that agricultural drought is evolving in St. Lucia and might possibly develop or continue in the ABC Islands, Eastern Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, the Leeward Islands, Martinique and Tobago.
