Abstract
Extreme climatic events and their hazards have strong impact on society. Urban areas in Brazil are especially vulnerable to the impact of such events due to their rapid growth and inappropriate infrastructure. Viçosa is a mid-sized city in Southeastern Brazil that has been experiencing issues associated with urban expansion and population growth since the 1960s. Thus, this study aims to identify patterns of extreme climate events in Viçosa based on daily temperature and precipitation time series (1968-2017). Homogeneity tests were carried out in order to identify breaking points in these climate variables. Climate trends were analyzed through Mann-Kendall test and their magnitude was checked based on Sen's slope. Results have evidenced statistically significant and increasing trends in annual minimum temperature since the 1990s. Moreover, statistically significant breaking points in extreme temperature indices have shown increasing number of warm days, and decreasing number of cold nights, in both annual and seasonal analyses. Extreme climatic events have been observed more often in recent years, mainly in the number of consecutive dry days and maximum and heavy precipitation days. Based on results, Viçosa experiences warmer conditions throughout the year, whereas more (less) torrential rainfall events have been occurring during Summer (Winter).
Highlights
Extreme climatic events – heat or cold waves, intense rainfall and droughts – have been assumed to be natural phenomena (Rosso et al 2015, Marengo et al 2017, Soares et al 2017)
13 indices were computed based on temperature and precipitation time series (Table I), as recommended by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection Monitoring and Indices (ETCCDI)
Viçosa city is located in Minas Gerais State, which is part of the Brazilian Southeastern region
Summary
Extreme climatic events – heat or cold waves, intense rainfall and droughts – have been assumed to be natural phenomena (Rosso et al 2015, Marengo et al 2017, Soares et al 2017). Natural hazards triggers (e.g., floods, landslides, and droughts) associated with extreme climatic events are not easy to be detected due to the combination of natural and anthropogenic factors (IPCC 2013, 2018). Undesired negative impacts caused by extreme climatic events, manly in agricultural and water management activities, may be more often observed in the future due to the global warming projected for the 21st century. Shifts in precipitation distribution over tropical regions may impact human welfare, agricultural production, fresh water availability and ecosystem balance (Ray et al 2015, Chadwick et al 2016). It is essential understanding climate variability and its associated extreme events
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