Impacts of Climate Change on the Coastal and Marine Physical Environments of Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS)

• Main Authors: Dye, Stephen, Buckley, Paul, Pinnegar, John
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/64718/

Temperature – sea surface temperature has risen by more than 1 °C over the last 100 years. Future temperature rises will have impacts on hurricanes, rainfall, coral reefs and wider marine ecosystems. Hurricanes - The IPCC (IPCC AR5 WG1) found strong evidence for an increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical hurricanes since the 1970s in the North Atlantic. El Niño- Understanding the influence of the El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon on Caribbean’s marine environment and timescales of variability is key to understanding how climate has been changing; projecting these relationships and ENSO itself into the future becomes vital to understand the fingerprint of global warming in the region. Precipitation – there are a wide range of projections for future precipitation change in the area with some models finding increases in the coming century while most suggest a drier future for the region. Ocean surface aragonite saturation state (Ωarg) has declined by around 3% in the Caribbean region relative to pre-industrial levels. Climate variability – the Caribbean region needs a smaller increase in temperature for its conditions to become distinct (climate emergence) from the envelope of climate variability over the last hundred years, compared with the rest of the world.