An extreme climate transition in the Caribbean's Virgin Islands. I. Evidence of teleconnection with the 1976/1977 Pacific climate shift

Abstract

We present the Caribbean's Virgin Islands’ climate variability over the last 60 years from indices of extreme temperature and precipitation, as well as their quantitative support for a recent climatic shift (1983.2 ± 5.5 years). The region's climate indices (defined via time series averages) and trends (defined via linear least squares regression fitting) of extreme temperature and precipitation were cross‐examined from 1952, 1961, 1978, and 1983–2014 to diagnose: the area's climatic extremes; a climatic transition's role in assessing decadal climate anomaly rates; and to provide an analytically independent test of the transition's existence. Analyses relied on the use of varying physical constraints to include weighting from statistical and non‐statistical uncertainties in our climatic outcomes. We report that diurnal warming and enhanced precipitation accompanied each interval, however, non‐negligible deviations existed in comparisons between the same anomalies in any 2 intervals. Our Virgin Islands’ long (1952, 1961–2014) versus short (1978, 1983–2014) climate variation comparisons provide evidence for the manifestation of decadal (or longer) shifts, and thus, biases, in recent Caribbean reports. Our climatic transition's overlap with the renowned 1976/1977 Pacific event insinuates a local Caribbean teleconnection, and contributes to the evidence growing globally for 1980s’ shifts in an abundance of feedback measures of Earth's energy budget.