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Future Climate Change in the Caatinga

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Caatinga

Abstract

This chapter discusses the general aspects of climate variability and climate change in South America, with a special focus on Brazil’s northeast region in which the Caatinga is located. It describes the main findings reported in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC AR5), and provides a brief review of the literature addressing climate change in northeast Brazil. In addition, simulations and projections of temperature and precipitation changes provided by 24 state-of-the art Earth System Models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) dataset that were analyzed in the IPCC AR5 are assessed. For scenarios of future projections, the near surface air temperature should increase by at least 1 °C for the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 2.6 (low radiative forcing scenario) and by 4 °C for the RCP8.5 (high radiative forcing scenario) by the end of the twenty-first century. For the Caatinga, there is a considerable spread amongst rainfall change projections of ±1 mm day−1, relative to 1961–1990, making it hard to identify any tendency in projected rainfall change. However, the RCP8.5 forcing scenario shows a slight rainfall reduction of about 0.3 mm day−1 by 2100. Among the most affected regions in Brazil, the Amazon and northeast regions appear to be large hotspots. For some modeling studies, projections of the future climate show a savannization of parts of the Amazon and desertification of the Caatinga region, with potential adverse impacts on biodiversity, supply and quality of water resources, carbon storage, and the provision of other ecosystem services.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The ‘climate system’ consists of five major components that interact with each other: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. The climate system changes over time because of the influence of its own internal dynamics and because of natural and anthropogenic external forcings.

  2. 2.

    ‘Land use’ refers to the total of arrangements, activities, and inputs undertaken in a certain land cover type (a set of human actions). The term ‘land use’ is also used in the sense of the social and economic purposes for which land is managed (e.g., grazing, timber extraction, and conservation). ‘Land use change’ refers to a change in the use or management of land by humans, which may lead to a change in land cover. Land cover and land use change may have an impact on the surface albedo, evapotranspiration, sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, or other properties of the climate system and may thus have a radiative forcing and/or other impacts on climate, locally or globally (Glossary of IPCC AR4 [IPCC 2007]).

  3. 3.

    Radiative forcing is the change in the net, downward minus upward, irradiance (expressed in W m−2) at the tropopause (boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere) due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as, for example, a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide or the output of the Sun (Glossary of IPCC AR4 [IPCC 2007]).

  4. 4.

    The ITCZ (intertropical convergence zone) is the area encircling the Earth near the equator which represents the junction between the southeast and the northeast trades (of the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, respectively). The ITCZ appears as a band of clouds that circle the globe near the equator.

  5. 5.

    Consecutive Dry Days (CDD): maximum number of consecutive days when precipitation is <1 mm.

  6. 6.

    Cold Days (TX10p): percentage of time when daily maximum temperature is less than the 10th percentile.

  7. 7.

    Cold Nights (TN10p): percentage of time when daily minimum temperature is less than the 10th percentile.

  8. 8.

    Warm Days (TX90p): percentage of time when daily maximum temperature is greater than the 90th percentile.

  9. 9.

    Warm Nights (TN90p): percentage of time when daily minimum temperature is greater than the 90th percentile.

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Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Minas Gerais State Research Foundation – FAPEMIG (APQ-01088-14).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Recursos Naturais, Universidade Federal de Itajubá, Itajubá, MG, Brazil

    Roger Rodrigues Torres

  2. Centro de Pesquisas Meteorológicas e Climáticas Aplicadas à Agricultura, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brazil

    David Montenegro Lapola

  3. Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Cachoeira Paulista, SP, Brazil

    Nancy Laura Rios Gamarra

Authors
  1. Roger Rodrigues Torres
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  2. David Montenegro Lapola
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  3. Nancy Laura Rios Gamarra
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Correspondence to Roger Rodrigues Torres .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

    José Maria Cardoso da Silva

  2. Department of Botânica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

    Inara R. Leal  & Marcelo Tabarelli  & 

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Torres, R.R., Lapola, D.M., Gamarra, N.L.R. (2017). Future Climate Change in the Caatinga. In: Silva, J.M.C., Leal, I.R., Tabarelli, M. (eds) Caatinga. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68339-3_15

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