Combating Climate Change Includes Adaptation

More intense heatwaves are one of the effects of climate change, and as Belize continues to bolster efforts towards climate resilience, extreme weather conditions worsen. Belize and other Small Island Developing States emit the least amount of carbon into the atmosphere but still experience the most impacts. Last year, the world observed one of the hottest days in recorded history, and according to the World Meteorological Organization, there is a high probability that this year will break the record. We spoke with Chief Meteorologist Ronald Gordon to hear what the trends are looking like moving forward.

 

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist
“When you look at the longer-term climate trend, it is very clear that we are in an era where our temperatures are warming up. There is no denying that. So certainly, in the long term, we are seeing an increase in temperatures due to climate change. Climate change due to human induced climate change to be specific. However, there’s a thing called climate variability. So there will be exceptional years where it’s going to be extremely hot other than other years, you will have other years where the temperatures will dip a bit. So it’s the natural variables within the climate system. Last year in particular was extremely hot for two reasons. Of course, I mentioned we have human induced climate change, which is causing temperatures to increase, but on top of that, we’ve had a linear year, which means that conditions are actually hotter and warmer, and drier, in our area, so certainly those factors combined resulted in a very hot year last year, and what we are seeing right now, based on the current trend, is that we’re also heading for a very hot year I must mention that, on the short term, I’m talking about doing two things here. So on the short term, which is the water scale, we are going to see things changing a bit over the next few hours. Indeed looking at what we have done already to the climate system. It is very difficult to see that we can reverse the impacts. Certainly, we can alleviate and that what has that is what is being done, I believe, but the regional and the international level to try to mitigate the impacts now by reducing, of course, our carbon footprint. However, there are, there is already a lot of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and those take some time to actually come out of the atmosphere. They have a long life as such. Therefore, even if we cut emissions at this point. There will be some continuing heating and warming up of the atmosphere. So to answer your second point, I believe you mentioned that we need to adapt and that’s certainly one of the measures that we take in our region, because as most of us know. We are not a major emitter. So countries like ours, we are not the culprit, so to speak, of for what is occurring. So one of the things that we are encouraged to do is to adapt to the effects of climate change.”