Engineer Tony Gibbs has suggested that engineering designs for buildings in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean will have to be adjusted if they are to withstand the more powerful hurricanes of the future which scientists expect to be spawned by climate change.
In a lunchtime presentation entitled Hurricanes And Their Effects On Buildings at the Barbados Yacht Club on Thursday, Grenadian-born Gibbs, a highly-recognised engineering consultant in the region, shared graphs and photographs that showed the destructive effect of recent hurricanes on buildings in various Caribbean countries.
He said data from a 2008 project in which he was involved predicted more major hurricanes, taking into consideration factors such as a one per cent Fahrenheit increase in global warming.
“By 2025, we are expecting the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes in the North Atlantic to increase significantly from ten to between 15 and 20,” Gibbs told the gathering.
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