Earth Today | Category 5 events call for more mitigation, adaptation, research

THE THREE recent Category 5 hurricane events to affect the Caribbean call for more – more mitigation, more adaptation and more research.

This is one of the messages to emerge from the recent Science for Today public lecture series of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the West Indies (UWI), which takes on topical issues for examination through science.

“Mitigation is changing so we reduce the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) we put in the atmosphere. Adaptation is changing in order that we and others can live with the changed climate,” noted Dr Tannecia Stephenson, head of the Department of Physics at the UWI, adding that also required is action informed by contextual research.

GHGs, such as carbon dioxide, are known to fuel climate change that brings with it several projected impacts, including more severe weather events, including the likes of hurricanes Irma, Maria and Dorian that have been experienced in the islands.

“We have to push for mitigation regionally and globally to offset the worst future possible. We have to think again about the standards, norms and bases we are using when factoring in climate change in adaptation planning,” the physicist added.

Also required, Stephenson said, is “substantially increasing climate impacts research” and figuring out quickly “the science policy interface”.

Translated, the co-lead for the Climate Studies Research Group, said this means: “Given the intense winds, heavy rainfall, strong storm surge and flooding that can be expected with more intense storms, Caribbean countries will need to put plans in place that will ensure our infrastructure is resilient, our population is kept safe, food stores are available, essential services are accessible, and recovery is as seamless as can reasonably be expected

“Insurance facilities as available through the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, for example, remain crucial to our nations. The awareness of Caribbean people on the greater risks associated with stronger storms is also fundamental to any measures that are implemented,” she told The Gleaner.

Her comments, which were made during and post her presentation that featured the topic ‘Dorian: The New Normal?’ comes against the background of Irma, Maria and Dorian that bludgeoned islands of the Caribbean in 2017 and then again this year.

The hurricanes left in their wake a trail of death and destruction, but also concern over what the Caribbean faces in the coming decades, given climate change realities.

RESEARCH TEAM

Stephenson herself has been part of a research team that makes clear what is in store for the region’s small island developing states. For example, in the 2018 work she co-authored with Professor Michael Taylor and others from across the region titled Future Caribbean Climates in a world of rising temperatures: the 1.5 vs 2.0 dilemma, a number of impacts are identified.

Those impacts include a pattern of greater warming across the Caribbean, enhanced drying and reduced annual rainfall – each made worse should global temperatures be allowed to rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is a temperature goal that has been long lobbied for by Caribbean SIDS.

In it, Stephenson, Taylor and others conclude: “The general picture is of a significantly drier and hotter Caribbean than present for a transition from 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2.0 degrees Celsius, with intensification of this state for 2.5 degrees Celsius.”

“The potential impacts on the Caribbean way of life are still to be investigated but are likely to be larger for higher global warming targets. The call to limit global warming at the end of the century to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures may finally then also be a call to a less risky regional climate state than that which further warming may yield,” they added.