Factors Other Than Climate Change, Main Drivers of 2014/15 Water Shortage in Southeast Brazil

Otto, Friederike E. L.; Haustein, Karsten; Uhe, Peter; Coelho, Caio A. S.; Aravéquia, José Antônio; Almeida, Waldenio; King, Andrew; Pérez, Erin Coughlan de; Wada, Yoshihide; Oldenborgh, Geert Jan van; Haarsma, Reindert J.; Aalst, Maarten van; Cullen, Heidi

doi:10.1175/bams-eee_2014_ch8.1

Cited by 29 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…What we can say is that the impacts of this drought and the resulting water crisis have in fact been consequences of increased water use in a warmer summer, when discharges into the Cantareira system were very low. This is confirmed by [18] who show that anthropogenic climate change is not found to be a major influence on the drought of 2013/14 and 2014/15, whereas increasing population and water consumption increased vulnerability.…”

Section: Regional Warming and Drought In 2014 And 2015mentioning

confidence: 56%

Some Characteristics and Impacts of the Drought and Water Crisis in Southeastern Brazil during 2014 and 2015

Nobre¹,

Marengo²,

Seluchi³

et al. 2016

JWARP

298

179

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Since the austral summer of 2014 southeastern Brazil has been experiencing one of the most severe droughts in decades. This rainfall deficiency has generated water shortages and a water crisis that have affected population and local economies in the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo, the largest megacity in South America. By January 2015, main reservoirs had reached storage levels of only 5% of their 1.3 billion m 3 capacity. The meteorological causes of the drought situation were linked to changes in the regional circulation, characterized by a mid-troposphere blocking high that lasted 45 days during the summer of 2014 over southeastern Brazil, something not seen in five decades. The water crisis was aggravated by a combination of lack of rainfall and higher temperatures, the summer of 2014 being the warmest and driest over the Cantareira reservoir system since 1951. Increasing population and water consumption increased vulnerability in the region, and while human-induced warming may not have generated the atmospheric conditions behind the 2014 and 2015 summer droughts in Southeast Brazil, it is more likely that the warm temperatures have affected the severity of the drought and exacerbated the impacts on the population. KeywordsDrought, Sao Paulo, Water Crisis, Vulnerability C. A. Nobre et al. 253

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Section: Regional Warming and Drought In 2014 And 2015mentioning

confidence: 56%

Some Characteristics and Impacts of the Drought and Water Crisis in Southeastern Brazil during 2014 and 2015

Nobre¹,

Marengo²,

Seluchi³

et al. 2016

JWARP

298

179

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Otto et al [9] have reported that the January 2014-February 2015 precipitation anomalies, relative to the 1941-2010 mean, presented 25% to 50% deficits over Eastern Brazil. The same conclusion was arrived at by Getirana [15], who showed that the precipitation rates were lower than the average, over the last 13 years (GRACE time-span) by about 16% for the southeast and 19% for the northeast.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It can be seen from Figure 6b that the cumulative TWSD started to present negative values at this time. At the same time the main reservoir (Cantareira Reservoir) for São Paulo, which had supplied up to 8.8 million people, was reported as having its level at around 5% of capacity [9]. Although the Cantareira Reservoir is not located in the SFRB its circumstances are typical of other metropolitan areas of the southeast such as Belo Horizonte, the capital of the State of Minas Gerais, located within the SFRB.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A Q¨hQ " A R¨hR (9) was used to convert the water level of the reservoir h R into equivalent water layer h Q spread over the quadrangle area A Q . The water level variations of Sobradinho Reservoir were obtained from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Foreign Agriculture Service, covering the time period of July 2008 to April 2016 based on Jason-2/OSTM altimetry mission [64].…”

Section: Variations Of Twsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, several droughts had previously occurred in the region (e.g., 1953/54, 1962/63, 1970/71, and 2001) and all were characterized by rainfall deficits [9]. In order to investigate the overall behavior of TWS series, averaged over SFRB, with respect to the rainfall, (Subsection 2.2.3) TRMM fields were used.…”

Section: Terrestrial Water Storage Deficit Index (Twsdi)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Water Availability of São Francisco River Basin Based on a Space-Borne Geodetic Sensor

Sun

Ferreira

et al. 2016

Water

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Brazil has recently experienced one of its worst droughts in the last 80 years, with wide-ranging consequences for water supply restrictions, energy rationing, and agricultural losses. Northeast and Southeast Brazil, which share the São Francisco River basin (SFRB), have experienced serious precipitation reduction since 2011. We used terrestrial water-storage (TWS) fields, inverted from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission measurements, to assess and quantify the ongoing drought over the SFRB. We found a water loss rate of 3.30 km 3 /year over the time-span of April 2002 to March 2015. In addition, the TWS drought index (TWSDI) showed the extension of the recent drought that has jeopardized the SFRB since January 2012, and which reached its maximum in July 2015 (the end of TWS time series). In this sense there seems to be a linkage between the TWSDI (wetness/dryness) and the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), in terms of the wavelet coherence, at the semi-annual and biennial bands, suggesting a relationship between the two. While acknowledging that further investigation is needed, we believe that our findings should contribute to the water management policies by quantifying the impact of this drought event over the SFRB.

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Two summers of São Paulo drought: Origins in the western tropical Pacific

Seth

Fernandes

Camargo

2015

Geophysical Research Letters

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Two years of drought in Southeast Brazil have led to water shortages in São Paulo, the country's most populous city. We examine the observed drought during austral summers of 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 and the related large‐scale dynamics. The 2013–2014 precipitation deficits were more concentrated in the state of São Paulo, while in 2014–2015 moderate deficits were seen throughout the region. We find that a persistent warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in the western tropical Pacific Ocean was an important driver of drought via atmospheric teleconnection in the two December–February seasons. The warm SST and associated convective heating initiated a wave train across the South Pacific. The resulting anticyclonic geopotential height anomaly over the southwest Atlantic expanded the westward margin of the South Atlantic high and prevented low‐pressure systems from entering southeast Brazil from midlatitudes. This mechanism suggests a hemispheric symmetry to that proposed for the recent California drought.

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Factors Other Than Climate Change, Main Drivers of 2014/15 Water Shortage in Southeast Brazil

Cited by 29 publications

References 3 publications

Some Characteristics and Impacts of the Drought and Water Crisis in Southeastern Brazil during 2014 and 2015

Some Characteristics and Impacts of the Drought and Water Crisis in Southeastern Brazil during 2014 and 2015

Water Availability of São Francisco River Basin Based on a Space-Borne Geodetic Sensor

Two summers of São Paulo drought: Origins in the western tropical Pacific

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