Trends of climate changes in the rainfall in river basins of the state of Pernambuco

ABSTRACT

Several studies have shown that the increasing of planet’s average temperature causes an intensification of the hydrological cycle, which may lead to changes in rainfall regimes, such as increasing of the occurrence of extreme hydrological events, modifying the water availability of a region and the quality of life of its population. The trend analysis of time series of rainfall is one of the ways to determine the occurrence of local climate changes. In this context, this work aims to estimate the trend in rates of climate change detection, referring to daily rainfall, defined by World Meteorological Organization (WMO), using the software RClimDex, and to evaluate the implications of these trends in river basins of the state of Pernambuco. For this, 75 rain gauge stations uniformly distributed along the state, varying from 1962 to 2011, with about 50 years of data, were used. Several trends in detection rates of climate change in the basins of Goiana, Capibaribe, Ipojuca, Sirinhaém, Una, Mundaú, Ipanema, Moxotó, Terra Nova, Brígida, Garças e Pontal were observed. It was concluded that there is evidence of climate variability for some of its major river basins: it was verified evidence of acceleration in the process of dryness of the river basins of Ipanema, Brígida and Garças, and it was observed a higher tendency of occurrence of extreme rainfall events for the basins of Mundaú, Sirinhaém and Garças.

Keywords:
climate variability; climate tendency; rainfall