# Regional Climate Change in Southeast Mexico-Yucatan Peninsula, Central America and the Caribbean
## 4 Discussion  
### Historical Trends  
The main results of the present study show that throughout the 57 years from 1960 to 2016, all 17 points of the region (SM-YP, CA and the Caribbean) have the same warming (\(\sim\)0.01 \({}^{\circ}\)C/year) in terms of temperature anomaly trends. The study of [31] reported an increase in warm events for the Caribbean. In the SM-YP region, this result is in agreement with other studies [11,13,73]. For example, [73] report that the warming trend for the southeast of Mexico is 0.1 (\({}^{\circ}\)C/decade) over a short period, from 1980 to 2010. Among all selected points in the study region, there are three points with notable discrepancies: one is at Panama and the other in Haiti and Jamaica (points 6, 14 and 16 in Table 3, respectively). Several studies performed over SM-YP, CA and the Caribbean region have already reported a persistent warming trend over this area [13,73,79,80,81]. The results presented here are consistent with these previous studies and certainly support claims that the SM-YP, CA and Caribbean regions could be one of the main climate change hot spots at the global level [43,44,82]. The quantitative temperature trends found in this study have approximately the same magnitude as those reported by [50] for the mid-summer drought region. In [73], the authors revealed a 0.23 \({}^{\circ}\)C/decade temperature trend during 1980-2010, while this study found a temperature trend of approximately 0.2 \({}^{\circ}\)C/decade during 1960-2016. Similarly, [73] also reported that the geographical extension of those values covered the Caribbean and Central America. The agreement found for the Tmp and Pre trends with previous studies is also detected by the spatial analyses of this study (see Table S6). In this case, performing a specific or spatial analysis shows the same trend behavior for the study region. Precipitation trends have a larger variability depending on the regions and periods of analysis [13,73], which is also consistent with this study's results (Table 3). In terms of precipitation, the maximum values reported by [73] were around \(\pm\)30 mm/decade, which was significantly larger than the \(\pm\)6 mm/decade found here, but this could be explained by the differences in the reference period and the higher sensitivity of precipitation associated with this [3,11]. In [20], the authors report a drier trend for CA; this result agrees with the results found here. In the case of the Caribbean, the results show an increase in precipitation, whereas in [29] the authors report different non-significant trends. However, Ref. [31] report increasing trends, too, in terms of rainfall events along 50/25 years in the Caribbean. The Taylor diagram, as a statistical tool, allowed us to show the correlation between the climatic drivers (ENSO, PDO, AMO) with the temperature and precipitation variables. In both cases, there is a dispersion of data (this is also found in other studies [22; 73]) and a weak correlation which could be associated with global warming. In [73], the authors show that the correlation between the climate drivers and temperature and precipitation variables is stronger when the trend is erased. In addition, there are other factors involved in the local climate. In [22], the authors report that ENSO is not the only teleconnection that influences CA. The Taylor diagrams show the climate drivers' (AMO, PDO, ENSO) frequency; this can be seen in the data spread, for the AMO particularly, where there is a multidecadal frequency. It is clear that the signal of ENSO and PDO, on the precipitation variable, produces an inverse correlation. PDO and AMO show a positive correlation with the temperature variable. The climate drivers maintain the same behavior with the precipitation variable on the SM-YP and CA, and the combination of the ENSO and PDO [16]. In [20], the authors show that the drier events are presented during the EL Nifo phase, suggesting that this signal is weak for the Caribbean and stronger in CA.