The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has fore­cast a wet­ter than nor­mal dry sea­son for 2025.

The TTMS pre­sent­ed its pro­jec­tion for the up­com­ing dry sea­son at the Na­tion­al Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum on Wednes­day. The fore­cast sees wet­ter con­di­tions for the first half of the dry sea­son, while the sec­ond half will like­ly see usu­al rain­fall amounts.

But TTMS Me­te­o­rol­o­gist Ean Wal­lace still warned that “above nor­mal rain­fall” in the dry sea­son would still be less than the month­ly rain­fall to­tals in the wet sea­son. There­fore, wa­ter har­vest­ing (for farm­ers) and wa­ter con­ser­va­tion prac­tices are still be­ing rec­om­mend­ed.

The TTMS al­so ad­vised that in an av­er­age dry sea­son, Trinidad and To­ba­go nor­mal­ly ex­pe­ri­ences about 107 dry days, but the up­com­ing sea­son will like­ly see 98 dry days. Sim­i­lar­ly, the prob­a­bil­i­ty of ex­treme drought con­di­tions is most­ly low (3-18 per cent).

The of­fi­cial start of the dry sea­son is yet to be de­clared, as it usu­al­ly ex­tends from Jan­u­ary to May. The 2024 dry sea­son be­gan on Jan­u­ary 10 and end­ed on May 25.

The main phe­nom­e­non af­fect­ing the 2025 cli­mate out­look is the El Ni­no South­ern Os­cil­la­tion (EN­SO). Ac­cord­ing to the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WMO), EN­SO is “char­ac­terised by fluc­tu­at­ing ocean tem­per­a­tures in the equa­to­r­i­al Pa­cif­ic, cou­pled with changes in the at­mos­phere, which have a ma­jor in­flu­ence on cli­mate pat­terns in var­i­ous parts of the world.”

For the first half of the dry sea­son, the phase of EN­SO ex­pect­ed is the La Ni­na, which will lead to in­creased rain­fall events over T&T. Warm sea sur­face tem­per­a­tures to the east of the coun­try will al­so pro­vide an abun­dance of mois­ture, ac­cord­ing to the TTMS.

Wal­lace al­so added that in the short term, the Mad­den-Julien Os­cil­la­tion (MJO) will like­ly en­hance the chances of rain­fall across T&T for the re­main­der of De­cem­ber and in­to Jan­u­ary 2025.

The Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA) ex­plained that the MJO is “an east­ward mov­ing dis­tur­bance of clouds, rain­fall, winds, and pres­sure that tra­vers­es the plan­et in the trop­ics and re­turns to its ini­tial start­ing point in 30 to 60 days, on av­er­age.”

While the out­look is a de­par­ture from the norm, there are some pos­i­tive im­pacts, in­clud­ing in­creased reser­voir recharge rates and the re­duced po­ten­tial of bush, for­est and land­fill fires. How­ev­er, there is a height­ened chance of flash flood­ing and a pos­si­ble in­crease in breed­ing ar­eas for in­sect vec­tors such as mos­qui­toes.

The T&T Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) al­so pre­sent­ed their sta­tis­tics, which showed a sig­nif­i­cant up­ward trend in bush­fires over the last four years, with 2024 record­ing three times as many fires as 2021. The TTFS in­di­cat­ed the months of March, April and May showed sharp in­creas­es in bush­fires.

The TTFS said pub­lic aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion are key to fire pre­ven­tion and that poor (out­door) house­keep­ing is one of the main haz­ards lead­ing to fires.

“En­sur­ing that all grass cut­tings are prop­er­ly dis­posed of, along with en­sur­ing that sur­round­ing ar­eas are clean is a very ef­fec­tive means of re­duc­ing the like­li­hood of a bush fire near your premis­es and busi­ness­es,” it said.

As such, the TTMS ad­vised pub­lic and gov­ern­ment agen­cies to man­age their wa­ter use ad­e­quate­ly and to ramp up and re­view con­tin­gency plans for mit­i­gat­ing fires and man­ag­ing spikes in vec­tor-borne dis­eases and res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments.