The Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean In­sti­tute for Me­te­o­rol­o­gy and Hy­drol­o­gy (CIMH) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Cli­mate Stud­ies Group Mona (UWI CS­GM) are urg­ing gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es, farm­ers and house­holds across the re­gion to brace for po­ten­tial­ly se­vere cli­mate ex­tremes as El Niño con­di­tions con­tin­ue to strength­en.

The agen­cies warn that the in­ten­si­fy­ing El Niño is ex­pect­ed to ex­ac­er­bate the hot and dry con­di­tions al­ready af­fect­ing many Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, in­creas­ing the risk of drought, ex­treme heat, wild­fires and ma­rine heat­waves.

El Niño, a cli­mate phe­nom­e­non char­ac­terised by above-av­er­age sea sur­face tem­per­a­tures in the cen­tral and east­ern trop­i­cal Pa­cif­ic Ocean, is known to in­flu­ence weath­er pat­terns world­wide, of­ten trig­ger­ing droughts, heat­waves and flood­ing in trop­i­cal re­gions.