2010 Drought in the Amazon was the Worst on Record

Hello reader!

It follows one communicates published ion the day (24/08) in the website of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) nothing that the 2010 drought in the Amazon region was th worst on record.

Duda Falcão

Drought of 2010 in the Amazon Region

was Most Dramatic Ever Recorded

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

From an analysis of time series rainfall data in the Amazon basin region, recorded since 1902, scientists with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais – INPE) concluded that the drought of 2010 was the most dramatic on record, surpassing the "once-in-a-century" drought of 2005. A paper about it was recently published in the Geophysical Research Letters.

The results suggest that the drought of 2010 in Amazonia started in early austral summer during El Niño (a natural warming of the Pacific waters) and then was intensified as a consequence of the warming of the tropical North Atlantic. The end result is a longer dry season that affects the hydrology of the Amazon Rivers.

Water levels of major Amazon tributaries fell drastically to low values and local streams completely dried up. The phenomenon has caused serious social and environmental problems, especially to floodplain population who were isolated by depending on rivers for their displacement.

INPE's researchers recently published another paper in the Theoretical and Applied Climatology Journal, in which presented results of an extensive research on floods in Amazon and Northeastern Brazil during May-July 2009. The phenomenon has caused deaths and left a thousand families homeless. This study demonstrates that these torrential rainfalls were the most intense and long-lasting ever recorded.

The Rio Negro, major tributary of Amazon River, reached its highest water level in 107 years. The researchers concluded that the event was a result of a meteorological factors conjuncture, especially the higher surface temperatures in South Atlantic – an important aspect to explain intense rainfall in a large part of the eastern Amazon and Northeastern Brazil. They also highlighted that these extreme events, as well as the lasting drought of 2010 in the Amazon basin, reinforce the hypothesis that abnormalities in rainfall and temperature will be more frequent in future scenarios of climate change.

Source: WebSite of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE)