Quo vadis Pantanal? Expected precipitation extremes and drought dynamics from changing sea surface temperature

Abstract

Climate change poses a critical threat to the Pantanal, the largest wetland in the world. Models indicate an increase in the frequency of extreme precipitation events and extended periods of drought. These changes can amplify consequences for Pantanal's ecological functioning, which has already experienced intensive human modification of its hydrological system and environmental health. The present study analyzed the spatial and temporal dynamics of rainfall and resulting extremes in the Brazilian area of the Upper Paraguay River Basin (UPRB) along with a co-evaluation of the global Sea Surface Temperature data (SST). The predicted results indicate that wet extreme precipitation events will become more frequent in the highlands, while severe and prolonged droughts triggered by warming SSTs in the Northern Hemisphere (North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans) will affect the Pantanal. The linear relations between precipitation with SST of very specific oceanic regions and even from specific oceanic indexes obtained in the present study significantly improve the forecasting capacity, mainly from a resulting reduction to two months of the lead-time between SST warming to concomitant precipitation impacts, and by explaining 80% of Pantanal´s precipitation variation from major oceanic indexes (e.g., ENSO, PDO, NAO, ATL3). Current SST trends will result in inter-and intra-annual flooding dynamic alterations, drastically affecting the Pantanal ecosystem functioning, with consequences for wildlife diversity and distribution. Regarding the foreseeable global climate and land use change scenarios, the results from the present study provide solid evidence that can be used at different decision-making levels (from local to global) for identifying the most appropriate management practices and effectively achieving sustainability of the anthropic activity occurring in the Pantanal.

Rescue Brazil’s burning Pantanal wetlands

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The global climate change footprint in a Mexican desert ecosystem: The increasing frequency of extreme climatic events

“…We used a data set of 70 years (1941 to 2013) for calculated an index based on rainfall data: the standardized pluviometric drought index or SPDI (Pita, 2001;Thielen et al, 2020). The SPDI is an index based on cumulative monthly precipitation anomalies and is used to identify the duration and the severity of both, drought (Alexander et al, 2006;Thielen et al, 2020) and humidity (Thielen et al, 2020). For the SPDI calculation, the equation used was:…”

“…The ̅̅̅̅̅̅ is the average value of the accumulated precipitation anomalies of all the months in the data series. The σAPA is the standard deviation of the accumulated precipitation anomalies of all the months in the series (Thielen et al, 2020). and the negative values indicates dry conditions (Table 1).…”

“…Categories to qualify a month according to the values obtained of standardized pluviometric drought index (SPDI)(Thielen et al, 2020).…”

2020 Pantanal’s widespread fire: short- and long-term implications for biodiversity and conservation

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