Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

seigo­nie.mo­hammed@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go is not fac­ing an im­me­di­ate drought, but dri­er con­di­tions could emerge lat­er this year, ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS).

In its lat­est out­look, is­sued on April 10, the TTMS said typ­i­cal dry sea­son con­di­tions are ex­pect­ed through June 2026, with “lit­tle to no con­cern for agri­cul­tur­al drought” in the short term.

Da­ta from Jan­u­ary to March show large­ly nor­mal dry­ness lev­els across both is­lands, al­though bor­der­line dry con­di­tions were ob­served in parts of cen­tral Trinidad, par­tic­u­lar­ly around Pi­ar­co. To­ba­go, by con­trast, has seen no sig­nif­i­cant dry­ness con­cerns, sup­port­ed by near-nor­mal rain­fall.

While the near-term out­look re­mains sta­ble, the TTMS has warned that con­di­tions could be­gin to shift from Ju­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in cen­tral Trinidad and parts of To­ba­go.

The re­port cau­tioned that re­duced rain­fall dur­ing this pe­ri­od may lead to low­er soil mois­ture and de­creased wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in the ear­ly stages of any dry spell.

Al­though wild­fire po­ten­tial is ex­pect­ed to ease slight­ly by June, the ear­ly part of the pe­ri­od may still present el­e­vat­ed risks.

Agri­cul­tur­al stake­hold­ers are be­ing en­cour­aged to take proac­tive mea­sures, in­clud­ing mon­i­tor­ing ir­ri­ga­tion, con­serv­ing wa­ter and avoid­ing burn­ing ac­tiv­i­ties as a pre­cau­tion.

The out­look al­so high­lights broad­er cli­mate in­flu­ences. With La Niña con­di­tions end­ing and a pos­si­ble tran­si­tion to El Niño lat­er in 2026, warmer tem­per­a­tures and in­creased evap­o­ra­tion could fur­ther con­tribute to dry­ing trends.

De­spite these pro­jec­tions, the TTMS stressed that the sit­u­a­tion does not cur­rent­ly amount to a drought emer­gency.

In­stead, the fore­cast points to a grad­ual shift to­ward dri­er con­di­tions, un­der­scor­ing the need for mon­i­tor­ing and pre­pared­ness rather than alarm.

As the coun­try moves deep­er in­to the wet sea­son, up­dat­ed fore­casts will be key in de­ter­min­ing whether these ear­ly sig­nals de­vel­op in­to more sig­nif­i­cant dry­ness lat­er in the year.