By: Staff Writer
August 13, 2021
Higher agricultural and ecological droughts are expected for the Caribbean and Central American regions within the next 10 years says newly released United Nations (UN) Climate report, produced by their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The “AR6 Climate Change 2021:The Physical Science Basis,” being called by world leaders and leading thinkers and scientists as sobering and shocking, paints a dire picture for the Caribbean and Central American region- as it does for the entire world- with the region already being deeply impacted by climate change events like Hurricanes and extreme heat.
The report noted that agricultural and ecological drought events as highly likely within the next 10 to 50 years in the region and are defined as the annual average of total column soil moisture below a base period between the year’s 1850 and 1900 and below the 10th percentile, with the 10th percentile, meaning that there is a greater chance beyond what experienced in that 1850-1900 time frame to happen again within the very near future.
The report said that for agricultural and ecological drought, results are shown for drying regions only, which correspond to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) regions in which there is at least medium confidence in a projected increase in agricultural/ecological drought at the 2°C warming level compared to the 1850–1900 base period in CMIP6. These regions include W. North-America, C. NorthAmerica, N. Central-America, S. Central-America, Caribbean, among other places over the next 10 to 50 years.
Dr Colin Young, executive director of the Caribbean Climate Change Centre, said in a statement upon release of the report: “For us in the Caribbean, the report foretells dire consequences, as the latest science is suggesting that the 1.5 degrees C Temperature goal will be reached by 2040, even if “nations started sharply cutting emissions today” and that a hotter future is certain.
“The world has already warmed by 1.2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, since 2020. The CCCCC was instrumental in getting the world to support the 1.5 to Stay Alive campaign, which was reflected in the historic Paris Agreement. Why is 1.5 degrees C so important for the Caribbean? See this link: https://www.marketforces.org.au/info/key-issues/keeping-global-warming-to-1-5-c/ based on the IPCC special 1.5 report.
“Essentially, the impacts from global warming will be devastating blistering heat waves, more frequent and longer droughts, more frequent forest fires, more intense hurricanes, more frequent floods, dying of coral reefs, crippling on fisheries, more coastal erosion, and cotal inundation etc.”
Attributing these higher drought expectations to the world expecting to increase in temperature by at least 2°C within the next 10 years at the very least, the UN report added that several regions in Africa, South America and Europe are projected to experience an increase in frequency and/or severity of agricultural and ecological droughts with medium to high confidence; increases are also projected in Australasia, Central and North America, and the Caribbean with medium confidence.
They also predict that there will likely be a decrease in rainfall during boreal summer in the Caribbean and that the average temperature and decreases in precipitation by 10–40 percent over Central America and the Caribbean by 2080-2099 and a projected a decrease in days with intense rainfall in the Caribbean under 2°C global warming by the 2050s.
The U.N.’s IPCC climate panel’s highly anticipated report also warned that efforts to limit global warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or even 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, “will be beyond reach” in the next two decades without immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.