Abstract
Spatial and temporal patterns of rainfall are governed by complex interactions between climate and landscape perturbations including deforestation, fire, and drought. Previous research demonstrated that rainfall in portions of the Amazon Basin has intensified, resulting in more extreme droughts and floods. The basin has global impacts on climate and hydrologic cycles; thus, it is critical to understand how precipitation patterns and intensity are changing. Due to insufficient precipitation gauges, we analyzed the variability and seasonality of rainfall over the Amazon Basin from 1982 to 2018 using high-resolution gridded precipitation products. We developed several precipitation indices and analyzed their trends using the Mann–Kendall test (Mann 1945; Kendall, 1975) to identify significant changes in rainfall patterns over time and space. Our results show landscape scale changes in the timing and intensity of rainfall events. Specifically, wet areas of the western Basin have become significantly wetter since 1982, with an increase of 182 mm of rainfall per year. In the eastern and southern regions, where deforestation is widespread, a significant drying trend is evident. Additionally, local alterations to precipitation patterns were also observed. For example, the Tocantins region has had a significant increase in the number of dry days during both wet and dry seasons, increasing by about 1 day per year. Surprisingly, changes in rainfall amount and number of dry days do not consistently align. Broadly, over this 37-year period, wet areas are trending wetter and dry areas are trending drier, while spatial anomalies show structure at the scale of hundreds of kilometers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agudelo J, Arias PA, Vieira SC, Martínez JA (2018) Influence of longer dry seasons in the southern Amazon on patterns of water vapor transport over northern South America and the Caribbean. Clim Dyn 52(5):1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4285-1
Almeida TDC, Oliveira-Júnior JF, Cubo P (2016) Spatiotemporal rainfall and temperature trends throughout the Brazilian legal Amazon, 1973-2013: rainfall and temperature trends throughout the Brazilian legal Amazon. Artic Int J Climatol. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4831
Arvor D, Funatsu BM, Michot V, Dubreui V (2017) Monitoring rainfall patterns in the southern amazon with PERSIANN-CDR data: long-term characteristics and trends. Remote Sens 9(9). https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9090889
Ashouri H, Hsu K-L, Sorooshian S, Braithwaite DK, Knapp KR, Cecil LD et al (2015) PERSIANN-CDR: daily precipitation climate data record from multisatellite observations for hydrological and climate studies. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 96(1):69–83. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00068.1
Bagley JE, Desai AR, Harding KJ, Snyder PK, Foley JA (2014) Drought and deforestation: has land cover change influenced recent precipitation extremes in the Amazon? J Clim 27(1):345–361. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00369.1
Barichivich J, Gloor E, Peylin P, Brienen RJW, Schöngart J, Espinoza JC, Pattnayak KC (2018) Recent intensification of Amazon flooding extremes driven by strengthened Walker circulation. Sci Adv 4(9):eaat8785. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat8785
Carvalho LMV, Jones C, Liebmann B, Carvalho LMV, Jones C, Liebmann B (2004) The South Atlantic convergence zone: intensity, form, persistence, and relationships with intraseasonal to interannual activity and extreme rainfall. J Clim 17(1):88–108. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017<0088:TSACZI>2.0.CO;2
Coe MT, Costa MH, Botta A, Birkett C (2002) Long-term simulations of discharge and floods in the Amazon basin. J Geophys Res 107(D20):8044. https://doi.org/10.1029/2001JD000740
Coe MT, Costa MH, Soares Filho BS (2009) The influence of historical and potential future deforestation on the stream flow of the Amazon River - land surface processes and atmospheric feedbacks. J Hydrol (Amsterdam) 369(1/2):165–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2009.02.043
Coelho C, Cavalcanti I, Ito R, Luz G, Santos L, Nobre CA, Marengo JA, Pezza AB (2013) As secas de 1998, 2005 e 2010. Analise climatologica. In: De Simone Borma L, Nobre CA (eds) Secas na Amazonia: Causas e Consequencias. Oficina de Textos Press, Sao Paulo, pp 89–116
Costa MH, Pires GF (2010) Effects of Amazon and Central Brazil deforestation scenarios on the duration of the dry season in the arc of deforestation. Int J Climatol 30(13):1970–1979. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2048
Da Silva PE, Santos e Silva CM, Spyrides MHC, Andrade L d MB (2019) Precipitation and air temperature extremes in the Amazon and Northeast Brazil. Int J Climatol 39(2):579–595. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5829
Davidson EA, De Araüjo AC, Artaxo P, Balch JK, Brown IF, Mercedes MM et al (2012) The Amazon basin in transition. Nature 481(7381):321–328. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10717
Debortoli NS, Dubreuil V, Funatsu B, Delahaye F, Henke De Oliveira C, Rodrigues-Filho S et al (2015) Rainfall patterns in the southern Amazon: a chronological perspective (1971-2010). Clim Chang 132:251–264. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1415-1
Donat MG, Lowry AL, Alexander LV, O’Gorman PA, Maher N (2016) More extreme precipitation in the world’s dry and wet regions. Nat Clim Chang 6(5):508–513. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2941
ElNesr MN, Abu-Zreig MM, Alazba AA, ElNesr MN, Abu-Zreig MM, Alazba AA (2010) Temperature trends and distribution in the Arabian peninsula. Am J Environ Sci 6(2):191–203. https://doi.org/10.3844/ajessp.2010.191.203
Eltahir EAB, Bras RL (1994) Precipitation recycling in the Amazon basin. Q J R Meteorol Soc 120(518):861–880. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.49712051806
Espinoza JC, Chavez S, Ronchail J, Junquas C, Takahashi K, Lavado W (2015) Rainfall hotspots over the southern tropical Andes: spatial distribution, rainfall intensity, and relations with large-scale atmospheric circulation. Water Resour Res 51(5):3459–3475. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014WR016273
Espinoza JC, Ronchail J, Marengo JA, Segura H (2019) Contrasting north–south changes in Amazon wet-day and dry-day frequency and related atmospheric features (1981–2017). Clim Dyn 52(9–10):5413–5430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4462-2
Fearnside PM (2000) Global warming and tropical land-use change: greenhouse gas emissions from biomass burning, decomposition and soils in forest conversion, shifting cultivation and secondary vegetation. Clim Chang 46(1/2):115–158. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005569915357
Fearnside PM (2015) Deforestation soars in the Amazon. Nature 521(7553):423–423. https://doi.org/10.1038/521423b
Freitas ACV, Ambrizzi T (2015) Recent changes in the annual mean regional Hadley circulation and their impacts on South America. Adv Meteorol 2015. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/780205
Fryzlewicz P (2014) Wild binary segmentation for multiple change-point detection. Ann Stat 42(6):2243–2281. https://doi.org/10.1214/14-AOS1245
Fu R, Dickinson RE, Chen M, Wang H, Fu R, Dickinson RE, … Wang H (2001). How do tropical sea surface temperatures influence the seasonal distribution of precipitation in the equatorial Amazon? J Clim, 14(20), 4003–4026. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(2001)014<4003:HDTSST>2.0.CO;2
Fu G, Charles SP, Kirshner S (2013) Daily rainfall projections from general circulation models with a downscaling nonhomogeneous hidden Markov model (NHMM) for south-eastern Australia. Hydrol Process 27(25):3663–3673. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.9483
Funatsu BM, Dubreuil V, Claud C, Arvor D, Gan MA (2012) Convective activity in Mato Grosso state (Brazil) from microwave satellite observations: comparisons between AMSU and TRMM data sets. J Geophys Res Atmos 117(16):1–16. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011JD017259
Funk C, Peterson P, Landsfeld M, Pedreros D, Verdin J, Shukla S, Husak G, Rowland J, Harrison L, Hoell A, Michaelsen J (2015) The climate hazards infrared precipitation with stations—a new environmental record for monitoring extremes. Sci Data 2:150066. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2015.66
Gloor M, Brienen RJW, Galbraith D, Feldpausch TR, Schöngart J, Guyot J-L et al (2013) Intensification of the Amazon hydrological cycle over the last two decades. Geophys Res Lett 40(9):1729–1733. https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.50377
Gocic M, Trajkovic S (2013) Analysis of changes in meteorological variables using Mann-Kendall and Sen’s slope estimator statistical tests in Serbia. Glob Planet Chang 100:172–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2012.10.014
Grimm AM, Zilli MT (2009) Interannual variability and seasonal evolution of summer monsoon rainfall in South America. J Clim 22(9):2257–2275. https://doi.org/10.1175/2008JCLI2345.1
Gutiérrez-Vélez VH, DeFries R, Pinedo-Vásquez M, Uriarte M, Padoch C, Baethgen W et al (2011) High-yield oil palm expansion spares land at the expense of forests in the Peruvian Amazon. Environ Res Lett 6(4):044029. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044029
Haylock MR, Peterson TC, Alves LM, Ambrizzi T, Anunciação YMT, Baez J et al (2006) Trends in Total and extreme south American rainfall in 1960–2000 and links with sea surface temperature. J Clim 19(8):1490–1512. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI3695.1
Huffman GJ, Bolvin DT, Nelkin EJ, Wolff DB, Adler RF, Gu G et al (2007) The TRMM multisatellite precipitation analysis (TMPA): quasi-global, multiyear, combined-sensor precipitation estimates at fine scales. J Hydrometeorol 8(1):38–55. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM560.1
Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais and National Institute for Space Research Projeto Prodes Monitoramento da Florsta Amazonica Brasileira por Sate’lite Prodes (2011) Retrieved April 16, 2019, from http://www.obt.inpe.br/OBT/assuntos/programas/amazonia/prodes. Accessed 16 April 2019
Kendall MG (1995) Rank Correlation Methods. Charles Griffin and Company: London. Second Edition
Khanna J, Medvigy D, Fueglistaler S, Walko R (2017) Regional dry-season climate changes due to three decades of Amazonian deforestation. Nat Clim Chang 7(3):200–204. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3226
Kleeman R (1989) A modeling study of the effect of the Andes on the summertime circulation of tropical south America. J Atmos Sci 46:3344–3362
Kumar Sen P (1968) Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall’s Tau. J Am Stat Assoc 63(324):1379–1389
Lau WKM, Kim K-M (2015) Robust Hadley circulation changes and increasing global dryness due to CO 2 warming from CMIP5 model projections. Proc Natl Acad Sci 112(12):201418682–201413635. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418682112
Laurance WF, Lovejoy TE, Vasconcelos HL, Bruna EM, Didham RK, Stouffer PC, … John Heinz H (2002) Ecosystem decay of Amazonian forest fragments: a 22-year investigation. Conserv Biol 16(3):605–618
Laurance WF, Camargo JLC, Fearnside PM, Lovejoy TE, Williamson GB, Mesquita RCG, Meyer CFJ, Bobrowiec PED, Laurance SGW (2018) An Amazonian rainforest and its fragments as a laboratory of global change. Biol Rev 93(1):223–247. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12343
Li W, Fu R (2004) Transition of the large-scale atmospheric and land surface conditions from the dry to the wet season over Amazonia as diagnosed by the ECMWF re-analysis. J Clim 17(13):2637–2651. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017<2637:TOTLAA>2.0.CO;2
Li W, Fu R, Dickinson RE (2006) Rainfall and its seasonality over the Amazon in the 21st century as assessed by the coupled models for the IPCC AR4. J Geophys Res Atmos 111(2):1–14. https://doi.org/10.1029/2005JD006355
Liebmann B, Marengo JA (2001) Interannual variability of the rainy season and rainfall in the Brazilian Amazon Basin. J Clim 14(22):4308–4318. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(2001)014<4308:IVOTRS>2.0.CO;2
Liebmann B, Kiladis GN, Vera CS, Saulo AC, Carvalho LMV (2004) Subseasonal variations of rainfall in South America in the vicinity of the low-level jet east of the Andes and comparison to those in the South Atlantic convergence zone. J Clim 17(19):3829–3842. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017<3829:SVORIS>2.0.CO;2
Longobardi P, Montenegro A, Beltrami H, Eby M (2016) Deforestation induced climate change: effects of spatial scale. PLoS One 11(4). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153357
Malhi Y, Wood D, Baker TR, Wright J, Phillips OL, Cochrane T et al (2006) The regional variation of aboveground live biomass in old-growth Amazonian forests. Glob Chang Biol 12(7):1107–1138. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2006.01120.x
Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13(3):245. https://doi.org/10.2307/1907187
Marengo JA (2004) Interdecadal variability and trends of rainfall across the Amazon basin. Theor Appl Climatol 78(1–3):79–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-004-0045-8
Marengo JA, Espinoza JC (2016) Extreme seasonal droughts and floods in Amazonia: causes, trends and impacts. Int J Climatol 36(3):1033–1050. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4420
Marengo JA, Nobre CA, Tomasella J, Oyama MD, Sampaio de Oliveira G, de Oliveira R et al (2008) The drought of Amazonia in 2005. J Clim 21(3):495–516. https://doi.org/10.1175/2007JCLI1600.1
Moore N, Arima E, Walker R, Ramos da Silva R (2007) Uncertainty and the changing hydroclimatology of the Amazon. Geophys Res Lett 34:14707. https://doi.org/10.1029/2007GL030157
Nepstad DC, Stickler CM, Soares-Filho B, Merry F (2008) Interactions among Amazon land use, forests and climate: prospects for a near-term forest tipping point. Philos Trans R Soc B Biol Sci 363(1498):1737–1746. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.0036
Nobre CA, Sampaio G, Borma LS, Castilla-Rubio JC, Silva JS, Cardoso M (2016) Land-use and climate change risks in the Amazon and the need of a novel sustainable development paradigm. Proc Natl Acad Sci 113(39):10759–10768. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1605516113
Oyama MD, Nobre CA (2003) A new climate-vegetation equilibrium state for Tropical South America. Geophys Res Lett 30(23), n/a-n/a). https://doi.org/10.1029/2003GL018600
Paccini L, Espinoza JC, Ronchail J, Segura H (2018) Intra-seasonal rainfall variability in the Amazon basin related to large-scale circulation patterns: a focus on western Amazon–Andes transition region. Int J Climatol 38(5):2386–2399. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5341
Partal T, Kahya E (2006) Trend analysis in Turkish precipitation data. Hydrol Process 20(9):2011–2026. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.5993
R Core Team (2018) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria Retrieved from http://www.r-project.org/. Accessed 24 May 2019
Rohrbeck C (2013) Detection of changes in variance using binary segmentation and optimal partitioning. Retrieved from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Detection-of-changes-in-variance-using-binary-and-Rohrbeck/b132976b756634c02a8bdd77d4c530d02222561a. Accessed 17 June 2019
Ronchail J, Cochonneau G, Molinier M, Guyot JL, De Miranda Chaves AG, Guimarães V, De Oliveira E (2002) Interannual rainfall variability in the Amazon basin and sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific and the tropical Atlantic oceans. Int J Climatol 22(13):1663–1686. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.815
Saad SI, da Rocha HR, Silva Dias MAF, Rosolem R, Saad SI, da Rocha HR et al (2010) Can the deforestation breeze change the rainfall in Amazonia? A case study for the BR-163 highway region. Earth Interact 14(18):1–25. https://doi.org/10.1175/2010EI351.1
Saatchi SS, Houghton RA, Dos Santos Alvalá RC, Soares JV, Yu Y (2007) Distribution of aboveground live biomass in the Amazon basin. Glob Chang Biol 13(4):816–837. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01323.x
Salviano MF, Daniel Groppo J, Pellegrino GQ (2016) Trends analysis of precipitation and temperature data in Brazil. Rev Brasil Meteorol 31(1):64–73. https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-778620150003
Santos EB, Lucio PS, Silva CMSE (2015) Precipitation regionalization of the Brazilian Amazon. Atmos Sci Lett 16(3):185–192. https://doi.org/10.1002/asl2.535
Satyamurty P, de Castro AA, Tota J, da Silva Gularte LE, Manzi AO (2010) Rainfall trends in the Brazilian Amazon Basin in the past eight decades. Theor Appl Climatol 99(1–2):139–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-009-0133-x
Sharma D, Babel MS (2014) Trends in extreme rainfall and temperature indices in the western Thailand. Int J Climatol 34(7):2393–2407. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3846
Sheil D, Murdiyarso D (2009) How forests attract rain: an examination of a new hypothesis. BioScience 59(4):341–347. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2009.59.4.12
Silva CHL Jr, Almeida CT, Santos JRN, Anderson LO, Aragão LEOC, Silva FB (2018) Spatiotemporal rainfall trends in the Brazilian legal Amazon between the years 1998 and 2015. Water (Switzerland) 10(9):1–16. https://doi.org/10.3390/w10091220
Sombroek W (2001) Spatial and temporal patterns of Amazon rainfall. AMBIO 30(7):388–396. https://doi.org/10.1579/0044-7447-30.7.388
Spera SA, Galford GL, Coe MT, Macedo MN, Mustard JF (2016) Land-use change affects water recycling in Brazil’s last agricultural frontier. Glob Chang Biol 22(10):3405–3413. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13298
Vera C, Silvestri G, Liebmann B, González P (2006) Climate change scenarios for seasonal precipitation in South America from IPCC-AR4 models. Geophys Res Lett 33:13707. https://doi.org/10.1029/2006GL025759
Walker R, Moore NJ, Arima E, Perz S, Simmons C, Caldas M, Vergara D, Bohrer, C (2009) Protecting the Amazon with protected areas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106(26):10582–10586. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0806059106
Wilks DS (2011) Statistical methods in the atmospheric sciences. Elsevier/Academic Press, 3rd Edition
Wright JS, Fu R, Worden JR, Chakraborty S, Clinton NE, Risi C, Sun Y, Yin L (2017) Rainforest-initiated wet season onset over the southern Amazon. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 114(32):8481–8486. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1621516114
Wu M, Schurgers G, Ahlström A, Rummukainen M, Miller PA, Smith B, May W (2017) Impacts of land use on climate and ecosystem productivity over the Amazon and the South American continent. Environ Res Lett 12(5):054016. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6fd6
Xu, Z. X., Takeuchi K, Ishidaira H (2003) Monotonic trend and step changes in Japanese precipitation. J Hydrol, 279(1–4), 144–150. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1694(03)00178-1
Yin L, Fu R, Zhang Y-F, Arias PA, Fernando DN, Li W, … Bowerman AR (2014) What controls the interannual variation of the wet season onsets over the Amazon? Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 119(5), 2314–2328. https://doi.org/10.1002/2013JD021349
Yoon JH, Zeng N (2010) An Atlantic influence on Amazon rainfall. Clim Dyn 34(2):249–264. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-009-0551-6
Zilli MT, Carvalho LMV, Liebmann B, Silva Dias MA (2017) A comprehensive analysis of trends in extreme precipitation over southeastern coast of Brazil. Int J Climatol 37(5):2269–2279. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4840
Acknowledgments
Primary funding for this research was provided by NSF INFEWS/T3 grant no. 1639115. Partial support also came from NIFA Hatch Grant Accession No. 1007604, and Center for Global Change and Earth Observations at Michigan State University. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or NIFA.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
ESM 1
(DOCX 30 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Haghtalab, N., Moore, N., Heerspink, B.P. et al. Evaluating spatial patterns in precipitation trends across the Amazon basin driven by land cover and global scale forcings. Theor Appl Climatol 140, 411–427 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-03085-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-03085-3