Guatemala continues to face significant natural hazard exposure and a natural resource base that has already been deteriorated by overexploitation, deforestation, and slash-and-burn farming techniques.
Food and water insecurity will become more common among the country’s most vulnerable as temperatures rise and rainfall becomes more erratic. Climate change will raise disaster risks in fast urbanizing places with highly unstable physical infrastructure, in addition to potentially worsening these negative effects.
Land-use change and forestry, followed by forestry, energy, and agriculture, account for roughly half of total greenhouse gas emissions.
Guatemala, a hilly country with coasts on both the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Honduras, has the biggest population in Central America and encompasses an area of 108,889 square kilometers (estimated to be 14.36 million people).
Since 1996, the country’s economy has risen as political stability has returned. Agriculture exports account for 26% of total exports (including traditional products such as sugar, bananas and coffee, as well as new products such as winter vegetables, fruit and cut flowers). Tourism and textile and apparel exports are two more key economic areas (USDS, 2011).
Despite these increases, the country’s Gross Domestic Product per capita is still less than half that of Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole.
Guatemala Climate
The average annual temperature for the shore is 25°C to 30°C; the average annual temperature for the central highlands is 20°C, and declines to 15°C for the higher mountains.
Overall, daytime temperatures peak just before the rainy season begins and gradually decline through January, whereas minimum temperatures peak in July, when the rainy season’s cloudiness decreases nocturnal radiative cooling
Guatemala’s rainy season lasts from May to October in the inland parts and from May to December along the coast, whereas the dry season lasts from November to April. The majority of the country receives between 1000 and 1200 mm of rain each year, whereas the Atlantic coastal portion receives around 4000 mm.
The monthly levels of evapotranspiration vary little across the country, ranging from 1300 mm/year to 1800 mm/year.
Guatemala Climate and Global Climate Change
The climate science community has a collection of models to help decision-makers understand the future climate. GCMs (Global Climate Models), RCMs (Regional Climate Models), and downscaling approaches (both empirical and statistical) are among the most extensively utilized, and several comprehensive studies are available on the topic.
Our primary source of information on future climate is global climate models (GCMs). GCMs are interacting mathematical models of important physical and chemical processes affecting climate, such as the function of the atmosphere, land, seas, and biological systems, that are simplified but systematically rigorous.
The bullet points below, produced for Guatemala from a suite of GCMs and RCMs employed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, provide insights into a changing climate (IPCC).
19 It’s worth noting, though, that Guatemala is divided into multiple climate zones, each with its own set of temperature, rainfall, and extreme event patterns. As a result, the magnitude of climate change is expected to vary among regions.
Guatemala Climate change and Disaster affects
Guatemala ranks fifth among countries with the largest economic risk exposure to three or more hazards, with at-risk areas accounting for 83.3 percent of GDP. 25 With 40.8 percent of the population exposed to five or more dangers at the same time, the country is also among the top five countries in the world most affected by floods, storms, and earthquakes.
26 Earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes are examples of low-frequency, high-impact phenomena, while floods and landslides are examples of high-frequency, low-impact events.
Some of these occurrences may worsen as a result of future climate change. As a result, we can see that, despite being a long-term concern that will develop over the rest of the century, climate change is already having substantial effects in Guatemala, adding to the country’s current challenges such as poverty, famine, and poor public health, to name a few.
And, along with other variables, it is poverty that makes our country so vulnerable to the effects of a more harsh climate. (Editorial note: Guatemala’s poverty rate is still over 50%, and malnutrition among children under the age of five is over 40%.)
In Guatemala, climate change will be felt mostly as a water management issue. Climate change has resulted in a rise in intense rainstorms over the last decade, involving not only tropical storms and hurricanes, but also torrential rains that produced floods and landslides, leaving a high death toll and a large number of survivors.
We must thus plan to deal with periods of low rainfall by increasing our capacity for rainwater storage and management, as well as periods of heavy rainfall by enhancing our infrastructure to reduce the effect of floods and the risk of devastating landslides.
reference – entremundos,climateknowledgeportal-worldbank
recentclimate-