Coping with climate variability and climate change in La Ceiba, Honduras

Abstract

La Ceiba, Honduras, a city of about 200,000 people, lies along the Caribbean Sea, nestled against a mountain range and the Rio Cangrejal. The city faces three flooding risks: routine flooding of city streets due to the lack of a stormwater drainage system; occasional major flooding of the Rio Cangrejal, which flows through the city; and flooding from heavy rainfall events and storm surges associated with tropical cyclones. In this study, we applied a method developed for the U.S. Agency for Climatic Change (2011) International Development and then worked with stakeholders in La Ceiba to understand climate change risks and evaluate adaptation alternatives. We estimated the impacts of climate change on the current flooding risks and on efforts to mitigate the flooding problems. The climate change scenarios, which addressed sea level rise and flooding, were based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates of sea level rise (Houghton et al. 2001) and published literature linking changes in temperature to more intense precipitation (Trenberth et al

Los modelos de cambio climático futuro como predictores de la reducción del área de distribución de dos especies de cíclidos endémicos de Honduras

“…La costa norte, especialmente en el departamento de Atlántida donde se encuentran los ríos Cangrejal, Danto y Papaloteca áreas de distribución de C. wesseli está bastante expuesta y vulnerable a la variabilidad climática. Los escenarios de cambio climático pronostican que las condiciones climáticas serán cada vez más extremas, por lo que, es vulnerable al aumento del nivel del mar y a los cambios de temperatura y precipitación (Smith et al, 2011;Sanders et al, 2015). Además, de las diferentes actividades humanas realizadas en esta zona, la vulnerabilidad de la región agravada por la falta de estructuras de gobernanza efectivas, las altas tasas de crecimiento de la población y la urbanización, así como la mala planificación del uso de la tierra, son aspectos que acrecentaran la degradación ambiental y la destrucción del hábitat (Chacón-Rivas, 2003;Fenoglio & Doretto, 2021;Rodriguez-Dubon, 2021).…”

Wind disasters adaptation in cities in a changing climate: A systematic review

“…Floods along with wind-related storms are becoming principal hazards to cities [103,104] by primarily causing damages to building structures [105]. Factors such as climate change, tropical cyclones, rainfall, and land use types are often taken into account when assessing current or future risks of floods [106][107][108][109]. Flood mapping is the main method used to present the spatial distribution of flooding risks.…”

Monitoring of Neotropical Streams Using Macroinvertebrate Communities: Evidence from Honduras

“…), which has been classified as a national park since 1987. This area features a tropical rainforest climate (Af in the Köppen climate classification) with important rainfall throughout the year (annual mean = 3.5 m) and a precipitation peak in winter (October-February) [19]. A total of six sites, localized in the medium-upper part of the hydrographic network, were selected (Figure 1).…”