Regional Climate Change in Southeast Mexico-Yucatan Peninsula, Central America and the Caribbean

Abstract

This study analyzes the mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures and precipitation trends in southeast Mexico-Yucatan Peninsula, Central America and the Caribbean regions. The Climate Research Unit (CRU) TS 4.01, with a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.5°, was the database used in this research. The trends of the four selected climate variables cover the period from 1960 to 2016. The results obtained show a clear and consistent warming trend, at a rate of about 0.01 °C/year for the entire study region. These results are consistent with some previous studies and the IPCC reports. While the trends of precipitation anomalies are slightly positive (~0.1 mm/year) for southeast Mexico-Yucatan Peninsula and almost the entire Caribbean, for Central America (CA) the trends are negative. The study also presents the correlation between temperatures and precipitation versus El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) drivers, indicating global warming and frequency signals from the climate drivers. In terms of the near future (2015–2039), three Representative Concentration Pathways (RPC) show the same trend of temperature increase as the historical record. The RCP 6.0 has trends similar to the historical records for CA and southeast Mexico-Yucatan Peninsula, while the Caribbean corresponds to RCP 4.5. In terms of the far-future (2075–2099), RCP 6.0 is more ad-hoc for southeastern Mexico-Yucatan Peninsula, and RCP 8.5 corresponds to Central America. These results could help to focus actions and measures against the impacts of climate change in the entire study region.

Potential Influence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in the Recent Climate of a Small Basin in Central Mexico

“…The AMO influence during its positive phase supported an increment in SU, Txx, PcpT, and r20. Similar results were found in [84] for the temperature and precipitation of Central America and Southeast Mexico, where AMO was pointed out as a low-frequency teleconnection; this was associated with the tropical Pacific-originated atmospheric variability [85]. The influence of the AMO was quite significant for the extreme maximum temperatures in most of the Mexican territory; for example, in the case of the state of Zacatecas [86], in the north center of the country, the behavior in the temporal evolution, as well as the correlation values, were quite similar to those obtained for the Apatlaco sub-basin.…”

Effects of Urbanization on Extreme Climate Indices in the Valley of Mexico Basin

“…The positive trends found for TMm (Figure 6a) and TNm (Figure 6b) are of the order of 10 −1 • C/decade, which are similar to those those found by the authors in [70], who report similar warming in much of the Mesoamerican region. This is also in agreement with the positive annual trends for TX, TN and TM (although not statistically significant at 95%) found by [71] for CDMX.…”

Molluscs along a salinity gradient in a hypersaline coastal lagoon, southern Gulf of Mexico

“…The difference in number and composition of species between the two studies may be a consequence of several factors, some related to changes in the environmental conditions, and others related to sampling and sample-processing methods. Regarding the environment, it is unlikely that the effects of recent climate change, which have been detected on the Yucatán Peninsula during the last 60 years (Carnero-Bravo et al, 2018;Andrade-Velázquez et al, 2021), affected the mollusc community composition inside the lagoon, as detected long-term variations are small compared with short-term (diel, fortnightly or seasonal) variations that occur in the waterbody. For instance, no directional change in lagoon salinity has been detected during the last 40 years (Wojtarowski et al, 2021).…”