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Observed changes in air temperature and precipitation extremes over Brazil
Author(s) -
Regoto Pedro,
Dereczynski Claudine,
Chou Sin Chan,
Bazzanela Anna Carolina
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.7119
Subject(s) - precipitation , climatology , environmental science , climate extremes , climate change , geography , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , geology , oceanography
We analyse seasonal and annual trends of extreme indices of air temperature and precipitation over Brazil during the period 1961–2018. The main goal is to investigate whether the climate is changing and if so, to explore if there is any marked seasonality in such changes. The daily observed datasets of maximum and minimum temperatures, and precipitation, are provided by the Brazilian National Institute of Meteorology and National Water Agency. We use the Sen Curvature and Mann‐Kendall statistical tests to compute the magnitudes and to evaluate the statistical significance of climate extremes trends, respectively. The results show that the warm extremes frequency of occurrence is increasing significantly while the opposite occurs for cold extremes, which reveals a very consistent and widespread warming over Brazil. The highest increases in warm extremes occur during austral spring and summer while for the cold extremes the greatest decreases are observed during austral winter. Unlike temperature, precipitation extremes show heterogeneous signals for most of the country. In Northeast Brazil, there are changes towards a drier climate, especially in summer and autumn. In the Southern region, the climate is becoming wetter, with a reduction in consecutive dry days, especially in spring. For the other regions, there is no strong clear change sign, but both positive and negative precipitation extreme trends, without statistical significance (mostly in Southeast Region).