Abstract
The 2012–2018 drought was such an extreme event in the drought-prone area of Northeast Brazil that it triggered a discussion about proactive drought management. This paper aims at understanding the causes and consequences of this event and analyzes its frequency. A consecutive sequence of sea surface temperature anomalies in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, at both the decadal and interannual scales, led to this severe and persistent drought. Drought duration and severity were analyzed using run theory at the hydrographic region scale as decision-makers understand impact analysis better at this scale. Copula functions were used to properly model drought joint characteristics as they presented different marginal distributions and an asymmetric behavior. The 2012–2018 drought in Ceará State had the highest mean bivariate return period ever recorded, estimated at 240 years. Considering drought duration and severity simultaneously at the level of the hydrographic regions improves risk assessment. This result advances our understanding of exceptional events. In this sense, the present work proposes the use of this analysis as a tool for proactive drought planning.
Highlights
The northeast of Brazil (NEB) has experienced one of its worst droughts ever recorded, from 2012 to 2018, leading to devastating widespread impacts on water storage, agriculture, livestock, and industry [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
The leading causes were associated with anomalies in SST in the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic oceans caused by decadal and interannual variability modes
The serial combination and association of the climatic phenomenon
Summary
The northeast of Brazil (NEB) has experienced one of its worst droughts ever recorded, from 2012 to 2018, leading to devastating widespread impacts on water storage, agriculture, livestock, and industry [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. In Ceará State, 39 out of 153 monitored reservoirs completely collapsed, another. The States of Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, and Pernambuco are concentrated drought hotspots [13]. Drought hazards have caused massive migration and significant population death, such as the drought of 1877–1879, with human drought-related deaths estimated to be around 500,000 persons in Ceará. The population had no warning alert, and countless citizens chose to endure with minimal provisions before migrating to less impacted areas.
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