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Paddling a canoe through the floods left by Hurricane Eta in his rural village near the north coast of Honduras, Adán Herrera took stock of the damage.
“Compared to Hurricane Mitch, this caused more damage because the water rose very quickly,” said Herrera, 33, a subsistence farmer who lives on top of a nearby levee with his wife and son while they wait for the water come down. “We are afraid of not having anything to eat.”
Hurricane Mitch in 1998 was the most destructive storm to hit Central America. But hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers across the region have lost everything to the floods caused by Eta, which made landfall in Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane on November 3. Now, with a second hurricane projected to make landfall on Monday near where Eta did, even more could find themselves in the same situation.
Climate scientists say this year’s record hurricane season and “unprecedented” double whammy for Central America have a clear link to the climate crisis.
“In a 36 hour period [Eta] it went from depression to a very strong Category 4, “said Bob Bunting, CEO of the nonprofit Climate Adaptation Center. “That’s not normal. It was probably the fastest turn from depression to major hurricane in history. “
The evidence of the influence of the climate crisis is not so much in the record 30 tropical storms in the Atlantic so far this year, but in the strength, rapid intensification and total precipitation of these climate systems.
“The warmer ocean waters brought by climate change are expected to make stronger storms stronger and intensify rapidly more frequently and at a higher rate,” said Dr. Jeff Masters, meteorologist and Yale Climate contributor. Connections. “These things have already been observed, particularly in the Atlantic, and will be increasingly so in the coming decades.”
Central America has been one of the regions most affected by the climate crisis to date, first with Hurricane Mitch and in recent years with more extreme weather patterns, particularly in what is known as the dry corridor, which runs from the north from Costa Rica to the end. south of Mexico.
“Heat is energy,” Masters said. “Depending on the prevailing weather conditions, you will intensify those conditions.”
In the dry corridor, that has meant more frequent, prolonged and intense droughts, as well as heavier rains when they arrive, often leading to flash floods that wash away crops.
Subsistence farmers in the region have struggled to adapt to the new reality, and many in the region have simply given up and left. The climate crisis, and the hunger it brings, is increasingly recognized as one of the main drivers of emigration from the region.
“I don’t see many options for Central America to deal with the problem of global warming,” Masters said. “There will be many migrants and, in fact, a large part of the migration that is already occurring in recent years is due to the drought that began to affect Central America in 2015.”
Hondurans emigrated to the United States in significant numbers for the first time after Hurricane Mitch. In the year before the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 250,000 Hondurans were detained on the southwestern border of the United States, more than double the previous year and only surpassed by its neighbor to the north, Guatemala.
According to the Red Cross, at least 2.5 million people were affected by Hurricane Eta, including 1.7 million in Honduras. Many of those who have lost everything are already considering or making plans to migrate to the United States, and groups are starting to organize caravans through social media.
Unable to meet the needs of its citizens before the pandemic, the economic recession has put the finances of Central American governments on the brink. And unlike what happened after previous natural disasters, the international community is grappling with its own problems related to the pandemic and is unlikely to step in to fill the void.
Hurricane Iota could cause even more widespread devastation throughout the region. Many areas still have high levels of Eta water, levees have been damaged or destroyed, dams are at or near capacity, and saturated land could lead to more landslides such as in Guatemala, where dozens are feared dead. after part of a hillside community was buried in mud.
The Atlantic hurricane season is expected to last until December of this year, which means Iota might not be the last.
“When a season like 2020 keeps putting these things in motion, it will continue to do so,” Masters said.
