Climate change is impacting the Caribbean, with millions facing increasing food insecurity and decreasing freshwater availability as droughts become more likely across the region, according to new Cornell research in Geophysical Research Letters.
“Climate change – where mean temperatures rise – has already affected drought risk in the Caribbean.
Since 1950, the Caribbean region has seen a drying trend and scattered multiyear droughts.
But the recent Pan-Caribbean drought in 2013-16 was unusually severe and placed 2 million people in danger of food insecurity.
In Haiti, for example, over half the crops were lost in 2015 due to drought, which pushed about 1 million people into food insecurity, while an additional 1 million people suffered food shortages throughout the region, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs.
Examining climatological data from the 2013-16 Pan-Caribbean drought, anthropogenic warming accounted for a 15 to 17 percent boost of the drought’s severity, Herrera said.
Climate model simulations indicate the most significant decrease in precipitation in the Caribbean might occur May through August – the rainy season.
A failed rainy season in spring and summer, added to a normal dry season in the late fall and winter, prolongs a drought.
Park Williams, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University.
The research was supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Science Foundation and NASA.