Hurricanes are Getting Worse and the Caribbean Must Adapt    

  The Caribbean is two months into the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season and one major storm has already swept through the region. Hurricane Beryl broke records by being the earliest recorded major storm to form in June, causing widespread destruction across the Caribbean. The severity of this storm is attributed to climate change, as it developed faster and earlier in the year than storms of a similar nature. Today, News Five’s Britney Gordon sat down with a few climate change experts to learn why this phenomenon is occurring and how climate change impacts the way Caribbean countries must adapt to hurricane preparedness. Here’s that story.

 

Britney Gordon, Reporting

Every day, the livelihoods of millions of people across the Caribbean are threatened by climate change. Whether in the tourism sector, or the fisherfolks out at sea, the loss of flora and fauna due to global warming has an impact on everyone in the region. However, these impacts are becoming more dangerous as the Earth continues to warm. Hurricanes are becoming more intense, droughts more severe, and those with little to no means of survival are much more vulnerable to these threats. Doctor Colin Young, Executive Director of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, explains how the climate is affecting the formation of storms.

 

Dr. Colin Young, Executive Director, CCCCC

“The same way the world is warming up in terms on land from greenhouse gases. These are your carbon dioxide and methane and other gases that trap the heat that the ocean is also absorbing the heat.  And the warmer the ocean gets, the more likely it is that when hurricanes form, that they get stronger quicker. And so the intensity. Is the issue that you saw with burial. And why is this scary? It’s scary because it gives very little time for people to get ready and for the authorities to warn persons to either move out of the part of the stop of the storm or to do the preparations that that you need.”

 

Young further explains that traditionally, at the start of hurricane season, ocean temperatures reach a peak of around eighty degrees in June, which would not provide enough energy to sustain the formation of a hurricane. However, the past thirteen months have displayed record-breaking temperatures in the Atlantic. At the formation of the season’s most recent hurricane, Beryl, ocean temperatures were on average eighty-four degrees; temperatures that are typically witnessed during September and October. With such high temperatures, the turnaround time between storms becoming major hurricanes is becoming shorter, and more difficult to predict. Michael Taylor, Director of Climate Studies at the University of the West Indies’, in Jamaica, provides additional insight into this dilemma.

 

Michael Taylor, Director, Climate Studies, Mona

“What we don’t have the greatest of science to do right now is predict the rapid intensification, as you have said, so it’s not that we didn’t get a warning that there would be a hurricane, but the amount of time to prepare for this severity of the hurricane now is reduced, and that has a significant impact because it means, you know, the preparations you’d have been doing for a tropical storm or a tropical depression suddenly have to become preparations overnight for a major hurricane.”

 

 

Taylor emphasizes the need to adequately prepare for the storms due to this phenomenon. The rapid intensification of storms has occurred in the past, as was witnessed in southern Mexico with Hurricane Otis in 2023. Within twenty-four hours, the tropical storm intensified into a category five hurricane. As was witnessed with Hurricane Beryl, storms are now strengthening to sustain intensity across multiple countries. For poorer communities, this can mean devastation, as they struggle to prepare.

 

 

 

Dr. Colin Young

“The Caribbean is at the frontline of the war on climate change. Our people are suffering the damages and we’re paying in lives and livelihoods from these hurricanes.”

 

 

 

 

Climate Change is happening now and the most vulnerable are at the forefront of the impacts. At COP27 in 2022, several countries around the world pledged to contribute to the Loss and Damage Fund, which is meant to alleviate the impact of climate change in vulnerable nations, including Small Island Developing States, SIDS. However, that money is yet to be delivered.

 

 

 

Michael Taylor

“Things that we call, used to call urgent,  are no longer urgent. There are immediate needs, you know, so things like, okay, we need to mitigate. So we need to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions so that we can keep the future temperature to one point five or, you know, two degrees. That’s no longer something that’s urgent that we should do. We have to do it. And so we. You know, people like me and you, citizens, we have to pay attention now to the cops, and look at what the countries are pledging in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions, including our own countries, and say, boy, we have to do more.”

 

Britney Gordon for News Five.