Impacts of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and deforestation on extreme rainfall events in the Amazon basin: A multi‐model ensemble‐based study

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) and total deforestation of the Amazon on extreme rainfall events in the Amazon basin. In order to quantify these impacts, numerical experiments were performed with the Eta regional climate model forced from initial and boundary conditions from the BESM, HadGEM2‐ES, and MIROC5 earth system models. In the experiment related to the increase in GHGs, numerical simulations were performed according to the IPCC RCP8.5 scenario. The effect of deforestation was quantified via an experiment in which the forest in the Amazon basin was replaced by areas of degraded pasture in the Eta model. For the analyses of the changes in extreme rainfall events, the multi‐model ensemble technique was used. The results were evaluated in terms of anomalies relative to the sensitivity and control experiments. In the results, it was observed that in an RCP8.5‐type GHG emission scenario there is a statistically significant increase in the maximum number of consecutive days without rain, a reduction in the maximum number of consecutive rainy days, reduction in total annual precipitation, and reduction in maximum annual precipitation accumulated over one and 5 days, respectively. The results for the scenario with increased GHGs and large‐scale deforestation in the Amazon basin are similar to the RCP8.5 scenario, but the intensity of changes in climate indices is significantly greater. It was also verified that the changes in the climatic indices are strongly associated with alterations in the energy balances at the surface and, consequently, in the large‐scale circulation. In general, it can be highlighted that the climate in the Amazon region is strongly dependent on the presence of the forest.