A 10-member ensemble from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) is used to analyze the Caribbean’s future climate when mean global surface air temperatures are 1.5°, 2.0°, and 2.5°C above preindustrial (1861–1900) values. The global warming targets are attained by the 2030s, 2050s, and 2070s respectively for RCP4.5. The Caribbean on average exhibits smaller mean surface air temperature increases than the globe, although there are parts of the region that are always warmer than the global warming targets. In comparison to the present (using a 1971–2000 baseline), the Caribbean domain is 0.5° to 1.5°C warmer at the 1.5°C target, 5%–10% wetter except for the northeast and southeast Caribbean, which are drier, and experiences increases in annual warm spells of more than 100 days. At the 2.0°C target, there is additional warming by 0.2°–1.0°C, a further extension of warm spells by up to 70 days, a shift to a predominantly drier region (5%–15% less than present day), and a greater occurrence of droughts. The climate patterns at 2.5°C indicate an intensification of the changes seen at 2.0°C. The shift in the rainfall pattern between 1.5°C (wet) and 2.0°C (dry) for parts of the domain has implications for regional adaptation pursuits. The results provide some justification for the lobby by the Caribbean Community and Small Island Developing States to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, as embodied in the slogan “1.5 to Stay Alive.”

A prototype multi-purpose index is proposed for use in the evaluation of practices for adaptation to climate variability and change. The Index of Usefulness of Practices for Adaptation (IUPA) allows the user to assign weights and scores to a set of user-defined evaluation criteria. Individual criterion scores are aggregated into a final index value. Both the final value and the individual parameter scores provide useful information for improved decision making in the context of climate change. An innovative aspect of IUPA is that guidance is given to the user through the inclusion of recommendations on evaluation criteria and criterion-specific weight factors. These have been defined by a panel of experts from the Latin-American and Caribbean Region (LAC). Application of the index is demonstrated for an existing adaptation practice from the Coquimbo Region, Chile. The IUPA tool is recommended for use in the evaluation ofadaptation practices in their design, implementation and post-implementation phase. It is practical for a quick first assessment or when limited financial resources are available, making the tool especially useful for practitioners in the developing world. The index is flexible both from the perspective of its construction and use. Additional expert opinions can easily be included in the future versions of the tool

By the beginning of the current century, there was heightened recognition that the Caribbean is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Yet, there was very little climate change science information for the region and at the scale of the small islands that make up most of the region. To fill the gap, a group of regional scientists representing three institutions and four territories (Barbados, Belize, Cuba, and Jamaica) initiated a project to provide dynamically downscaled climate change information for the Caribbean. The Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS)-Caribbean initiative was premised on a shared workload with goals to build regional capacity to provide climate change information for the region from within the region, to provide much needed climate information in the shortest possible time frame, and to create a platform for sharing the information as widely as possible. Ten years later offers the opportunity for retrospection and evaluation, particularly since a phase 2 initiative is being formulated. By both accident and design, the legacies of the PRECIS-Caribbean initiative include i) the positioning of the Caribbean to pose and answer for itself some of the emerging second-generation climate change questions; ii) the emergence of a regional template for capacity building in the sciences through cooperation; iii) an expanded regional capacity to undertake climate science; and iv) a significant body of climate change and climate science knowledge relevant to and at the scale of the Caribbean region.

No abstract

The future climatic behavior of the wind resource in Cuba has not been studied in the past. This study presents a preliminary analysis of the behavior of wind speed using the regional climate model PRECIS (Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies) in highresolution scenarios of climate change SRES A1B (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios), driven with boundary conditions from the General Circulation Model ECHAM5 (European Centre/HAMburg climate model) and 6 of the 16 members of the set of perturbed physics HadCM3 (Hadley Center Coupled Model, version 3) global climate model. Changes in the distribution of wind speed for three periods of 30 years in the future