Recent climatic trends in Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies
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Abstract
Seawater level rise is one of the most prevalent adverse environmental impacts of the ongoing global warming process. Island nations are more vulnerable to the impact than the land masses. Two such islands impacted by global warming are Trinidad and Tobago, located in the Atlantic Ocean.However, there is minimal related research in this area in the context of the impact of climate variability. Therefore, it is timely and interesting to assess the climatic trends in islands that are extremely vulnerable like Trinidad and Tobago. This paper presents a detailed non-parametric statistical analysis for well-known climate gauges in Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies. Mann Kendall and Sen’s slope tests were carried out on two identified rain gauges in Trinidad and Tobago. Monthly climatic data including cumulative rainfall and the average of the minimum and maximum atmospheric temperatures were processed to identify the trend analysis using the above stated non-parametric tests. Important results are found from the analysis; most importantly, there is no significant impact on the rainfall in the area due to the climate variability over 30 years. However, the atmospheric temperature behaves in a different way and it has a rising pattern across the total 12 months studied. This can be seen for both the minimum and maximum atmospheric temperatures. Therefore, the warm months are becoming warmer and the cold months are becoming less cold. This is a critical finding that must be considered for any future planning processes.
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