Rainfall Correlations in Trinidad

Abstract

AN important feature of modern economic geography is the study of the relationship between climatic conditions and industry. Regarding climate and weather as being respectively the static and dynamic aspects of meteorological conditions, we have in the tropics, as Dr. Martin Leake has recently emphasised, climate a determinate factor in the location of industries and colonies of people; weather, on the other hand, is frequently the most important factor underlying local industrial variation. In the tropics, rainfall is generally the chief weather factor affecting crop yields, and in Trinidad (West Indies) the writer has given some attention to the relationship between variation in rainfall and yield of cacao—the island's principal product. This work has definitely established the fact that the annual variations in yield, which may deviate as much as 101·8 percent. of a 5-year moving average (River Estate, 1921–22), are fundamentally due to variations in rainfall, though the exact extent of the connexion has not been statistically determined in all cases.