From Curacao Chronicle

Climate change is now causing more droughts, or destructive rains worse than any hurricane with catastrophic human and economic losses.

TTC Service.-The forecasts for the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean 2015 are benign, but the Caribbean region has decided to prepare for the worst storms may come from June to November.

According to meteorologists in United States and the Caribbean islands, cooler Caribbean waters and a strong El Niño mean there probably will be fewer than average hurricanes forming over the Atlantic Ocean this year.

But the same experts added that a less active season doesn’t mean the threat of a destructive storm making landfall has evaporated. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Kathryn Sullivan said last week that “No matter how many pitches Mother Nature throws at us, if just one of those pitches gets through the strike zone, we could be in a lot of trouble.”

Forecasters expect between six and 11 tropical storms to form off the U.S. Gulf Coast. Three to six of those could become hurricanes with sustained winds of at least 111 mph. At least two of those hurricanes could strengthen to a Category 3 or higher.

Hurricanes are not the only destructive phenomena that may face the Caribbean islands. Climate change is now causing more droughts, or destructive rains worse than any hurricane with catastrophic human and economic losses. The possible tsunamis caused by earthquakes are also under surveillance.

Regional organizations in the Caribbean believe that no “soft” regional prognosis is reliable if rapid climate change are taken into account.

The Association of Caribbean States included on agenda the topic of vulnerability. In the context of disaster risk reduction, vulnerability formally refers to “the characteristics of a person or group and the situation that influences their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impacts of a natural hazard.

The concept is relative and dynamic, and in many cases is intrinsically associated with poverty. It has also long been recognized that vulnerability can be categorized into three different subtypes: physical vulnerability to the actual environment; social vulnerability which affects the population’s societal, economic and administrative structures; and human vulnerability, a combination of the former two.

The dominant view of the organization is that a real disaster occurs when an underprivileged population is exposed to a hazard of any type.

Implicit in this perspective is “differential vulnerability” or the recognizance that within a single society or community, there may exist differing levels of vulnerability among the different populations. Given the impact that disasters have on regional economies, and notwithstanding the underlying complexities, political and social, one thing is certain: the countries of the Greater Caribbean must build their capacities as well as resilience in order to adapt to the threats of natural hazards.

No matter how “soft” can be forecasts.

For more on this story go to: http://curacaochronicle.com/region/caribbean-prepare-for-the-worst-in-hurricane-season/

IMAGE: Ivan Cayman Islands www.philipnadeau.com