Heat Blast: Heatwaves, uneven hurricane activity forecast for late wet season

Barbados and the wider Caribbean can expect a run of intense heat, patchy hurricane activity and uneven rainfall through the latter part of the wet season, climatologists and meteorologists predicted on Friday.

In the July to September edition of the Caribbean Climate Outlook newsletter, lead regional climatologist with the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), Dr Cedric Van Meerbeek, and climate change specialist with the UWI Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES), Dr Theodore Allen, report that these conditions will result from a strengthening of the El Niño weather system during the summer months of the Caribbean wet season, as well as global warming.

The experts caution that people should also experience increasingly intense humid heat into the peak of the heat season in September, culminating in recurrent heatwaves, especially in the far north of the region.

They predict that the irregular bouts of Atlantic Hurricane Season activity through August will likely be followed by a muted peak season in September.

Despite slower alleviation of lingering drought into September, and a slower increase in rainfall frequency than in most years, bouts of excessive rainfall are forecast to lead to “high to extremely high potential” for flooding, flash floods, cascading hazards and associated impacts are also forecast for the coming two to three months.

Van Meerbeek and Allen also place Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean on alert for frequent intrusions of dust-laden Saharan air. While this is likely to inhibit tropical cyclones, they might exacerbate humid heat and deteriorating air quality.

The experts are flagging severe short-term drought which has already developed in southwest Tobago and western Barbados, and long-term drought in easternmost Cuba, Grenada, easternmost Guadeloupe, southwest Jamaica, Martinique, southwest Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, St Vincent, and southeast Suriname.

Agricultural drought is evolving in Saint Lucia and might possibly develop or continue in the Aruba-Bonaire-Curacao (ABC Islands), eastern Cuba (by the end of this month), Dominica, Grenada, the Leeward Islands, Martinique and Tobago.

Short-term drought is reported to be evolving in Antigua and Barbuda, Grand Cayman, Martinique, northeast Puerto Rico, St Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia (by the end of September), Tobago and the US Virgin Islands, and might possibly develop or continue in the ABC Islands, Barbados, parts of Belize and Grenada.

Long-term drought is also said to be evolving in Antigua, Martinique, St Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia, and might possibly develop or continue (by the end of November) in Martinique and St Kitts.

(EJ)