Climatic Extremes in Brazil: a parallel analysis of Historical Trends and Socioeconomical Impacts

Abstract

An important consequence of human induced climate change is the increase in extreme weather events. This study contributes to the understanding of Brazil's climate change by examining historical temperature and precipitation patterns. Extreme events of temperature and precipitation are identified using data from the Brazilian Institute of Meteorology, which includes records from 634 meteorological stations operating intermittently since 1961. Using the first 30 years (1961 to 1990) as the reference period, our results show a significant increase in warm days and a corresponding decrease in cold days over the last 30 years (1991 to 2020), in agreement with previous works. In terms of precipitation, it indicates a trend toward drier conditions in the Northeast region of Brazil, whereas the South is experiencing wetter conditions, with an increase in the number of heavy precipitation days in South and in the extremely dry periods in the Northeast. These results have been verified for consistency with several extreme climate indices measured in this study. Additionally, data from S2iD is analyzed, an official database that records natural disasters in Brazil, to estimate their impact in terms of human losses and financial costs over the past decade. Our findings indicate that drought events are the most economically costly, with multiple instances causing damages exceeding a billion USD, whereas storms have the greatest impact on people. Although it is not possible to directly attribute the natural disasters recorded in the S2iD database to the extreme weather events identified through meteorological data, discussion is done on potential implications of these events in the frequency and location of the disasters.