Assessment of water availability in the period of 100 years at the head of the São Francisco river basin, based on climate change scenarios

• Autor(a) principal: Coutinho, Priscila Esposte
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Cataldi, Marcio
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Engenharia na Agricultura
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufv.br/reveng/article/view/11641
• topic: Rainfall-runoff modeling; SMAP; CCSM4; IPCC; Climate models; Rainfall-runoff modeling, SMAP, CCSM4, IPCC

In the last century, changes in climate trends have been observed around the planet, which have led to alterations in the hydrological cycle. Studies that account the impact of climate change on water availability, therefore, are of great importance, especially in Brazil’s case, where water from rivers, in addition to being destined for human consumption, animal watering and economic activities, has a great participation in electricity generation, which makes its energy matrix vulnerable to variations in the climate system. In this work, a flow analysis for the São Francisco river basin is carried out up to the year 2100, considering the precipitation data of the CCSM4 climate model presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth’s Assessment Report (AR5). Projections of future flow were made for the scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, based on the rain-flow model SMAP, followed by a comparative analysis with the present climate. In general, it was observed that the decades of 2010 to 2100 will be marked by the high levels of precipitation, interspersed by long droughts, in which the recorded flow will be lower than the Long Term Average (LTA) calculated for the basin. Therefore, new management strategies must be considered to maintain the multiple uses of the basin.