Assessing temperature and water vapor in the atmospheric column over South America: a synopsis of identified trends using ERA5 reanalysis Anna Carolina Bazzanela, Wanderson Luiz-Silva, Juan Neres, José Ricardo França, Lucas Menezes, Fabricio Polifke Journal of Atmospheric and Solar Terrestrial Physics, 2025 Climate change is already a reality globally. Several studies have quantified how these alterations affect specific energy budget components, such as radiative fluxes, heat storage, and energy transfer processes, correlating with verified modifications in several climate variables. Given the crucial role of thermodynamic processes in the hydrological cycle , this paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the climatology of air temperature and water vapor throughout the atmospheric column across South America. Moreover, detected trends in these variables are analyzed in the present climate using reanalysis data, focusing on the regions defined by the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The results reveal an increasing air temperature trend at all levels of the atmosphere over the continent. The highest rates of air temperature rise are in the central portion of South America, while at high levels, the rate of warming is more significant in the northern part of the continent. There is an increasing trend in water vapor throughout the atmospheric column, particularly in the northern sector of South America. The identified decreasing trends of water vapor or specific humidity in the southeastern region do not exhibit a statistically significant signal. Such observed changes cause alterations in global and regional circulation patterns, mainly associated with extreme events. • Significantly warming trends are observed in all tropospheric levels. • The water vapor is increasing across the entire continent of South America. • The trends indicate a more significant increase in water vapor over northern South America.
A multiscale study of a heavy rainfall event of April 2019 in Rio de Janeiro city Gabriela Rosalino Unfer, José Ricardo de Almeida França, Wallace Figueiredo Menezes, Fabricio Polifke da Silva Natural Hazards, 2025 On April 8th and 9th, 2019, the city of Rio de Janeiro experienced intense rainfall characterized by accumulations exceeding 300 mm/24 hours, reaching a maximum of 343.4 mm. Accumulations were higher in stations located south of the Tijuca Massif, while lower values were recorded in the Northern Zone (NZ) stations. The rainfall persisted for 28 h, and three distinct precipitation peaks denoted as P1, P2, and P3, were identified. The P1 stood out for its higher intensities and long-lived rainfall duration and was the only peak associated with electrical discharges. It exhibited clouds with the highest tops, lowest temperatures, and a prevalence of clouds with ice-phase tops. P1 was associated with the presence of Cumulonimbus clouds, hitting significantly all stations in the Southern Zone. P2 and P3 were similar in intensity and duration, although with distinct cloud characteristics. P3 was dominated by Nimbostratus clouds, having the lowest top heights and warmer temperatures, and a prevalence of supercooled water at the cloud tops, indicating a high liquid water content. P2 was intermediate, featuring cloud tops lower than P1 but higher than P3. However, during peak rainfall intensity, Nimbostratus clouds were present, which was more critical in NZ stations, when surface winds were predominantly from the North. The event was influenced by the transport of high moisture content from the Central-Western region of Brazil towards the Southeast, coupled with the formation of a cyclone near the coast of Rio de Janeiro, besides the presence of pronounced moisture convergence zones over the municipality.
Evaluation of the Rio de Janeiro State Flood Warning System: A Case Study for the Hydrographic Region of the Médio Paraíba do Sul (RJ), Brazil Lídia Luisa Mota De Pontes, José Ricardo De Almeida França, Lino Augusto Sander De Carvalho Anuario do Instituto De Geociencias, 2023 This work is a case study for the Hydrographic Region of the Médio Paraíba do Sul located in the State of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), which has natural disasters, such as floods, as the most recurrent. Due to the social, economic and environmental impacts that these disasters cause, this research aim to analyze the history of alerts issued by the Flood Warning System (FWS) and to assess its efficiency. Through the retro-analysis of Alert Trigger Events (ATE) that occurred in the monitored rivers, investigations were also carried out in the hydrological and meteorological scope. The results identified that the Attention stage belonging to the operational protocol significantly reduces the efficiency of the FWS about sending alerts, causing high false alarm rate. Regarding the influence that variation in the type of data transmission has on the Operational Protocol in RH-III, it is considered that the time interval between data transmission and their availability on the State Environmental Institute (SEI) erver generates a false alarm, however the FWS is still efficient. Barra Mansa River is the only one that has flood events, which raises questions about the representativeness of the other stations spread across RH-III. In addition, 60% of alerts issued for RH-III were related to episodes of Cold Fronts and South Atlantic Convergence Zones. These information helps improve the description of the flood events in the region. Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) identified periods that the rainfall rate was below the climatological average, indicating a drier environment, but with alerts issued.
Solar Radiation Components on a Horizontal Surface in a Tropical Coastal City of Salvador Leonardo Rafael Teixeira Cotrim Gomes, Edson Pereira Marques Filho, Iuri Muniz Pepe, Bruno Severino Mascarenhas, Amauri Pereira de Oliveira, José Ricardo de A. França Energies, 2022 Renewable energy must be prioritized by humankind, mainly if there is an expected increase of 50% in energy consumption by 2030 and climate change scenarios are also confirmed. Urban areas consume 70% of the available energy on the planet. Brazil, the largest country in South America, concentrates more than 85% of its population in urban areas, facing a challenge to increase the renewable power plants in its energy matrix. This work presents the solar radiation components behavior for the city of Salvador to contribute with initiatives for the use of solar energy resource. Firstly, a radiometric platform was implemented to obtain direct measurements of global (EG) and diffuse (EDF) components of incoming solar radiation at the surface. The knowledge of EDF is an important requirement to support photovoltaic system projects, and there is no information on direct measurements of this component in the State of Bahia. The diffuse radiation measurement device (DRMD) was designed and built for this purpose. The measurements of solar radiation components performed in this research were submitted to a specific quality control, statistically analyzed and used to evaluate the performance of different empirical models to represent the behavior of EDF in the tropical coastal city. The results demonstrate the potential to explore solar energy in the city of Salvador, with annual values of sunshine higher than 2200 h year−1 and average daily intensities of EG and EDF equal to 18.7 MJm−2day−1 and 7.35 MJm−2day−1, respectively. The analysis of the diurnal cycle shows that EG in summer reaches a maximum of 4.2 MJm−2h−1 and in the rainy season it reaches a minimum of 3.7 MJm−2h−1, both at noon, and in summer the EDFh is 35% of the EGh and it is 46% in the rainy season.
A Topological Data Analysis approach for retrieving Local Climate Zones patterns in satellite data Caio Átila Pereira Sena, João Antônio Recio da Paixão, José Ricardo de Almeida França Environmental Challenges, 2021 In the context of geospatial studies, meaningful information may be hidden in the aspects of form and connectivity inscribed in the measurements. Therefore, here is proposed the use of H0 Persistent Homology (PH), a Topological Data Analysis tool to automatically summarize and quantify relevant spatial features in satellite data. With that aim, we extend the algebraic concepts of cubical complexes to the satellite data perspective and describe homology groups portrayal. As a proof by example, we present an inter-site comparison of Enhanced Vegetation Index from MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer over fifteen regions worldwide. There, the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) framework is used to examine the outcomes of the PH filtration. Then, the features from every region that were encapsulated by the PH were compared against each other with the aid of the Bottleneck Distance metric. After that, it was performed a dimensionality reduction with a multi-dimensional scaling to build a 2-D geometry of the level of similarity among them. Thereby, the common aspects of the regions became explicit by their coordinates’ proximity in space. Then, with the use of the K-means algorithm, we were able to cluster those areas belonging to the same LCZ class. The results indicate that the proposed methods are robust to missing data in the satellite data and insensitive to a certain level of inhomogeneity in the spatial subsetting of data. Furthermore, the outcomes provide insights on several viable applications for future research.
Drought and fires influence the respiratory diseases hospitalizations in the Amazon Fausto Machado-Silva, Renata Libonati, Thiago Felipe Melo de Lima, Roberta Bittencourt Peixoto, José Ricardo de Almeida França, Mônica de Avelar Figueiredo Mafra Magalhães, Filippe Lemos Maia Santos, Julia Abrantes Rodrigues, Carlos C. DaCamara Ecological Indicators, 2020
Sugar cane, orange and herbaceous cotton climatic zoning for the Northeast Region of Brazil Anuario do Instituto De Geociencias, 2006
Impact of CO2 doubling in the global climate simulated by aatmosphere general circulation model with variable grid Anuario do Instituto De Geociencias, 2004
