Abstract
During 2009 the Amazon basin was hit by a heavy flooding with a magnitude and duration few times observed in several decades. Torrential rain in northern and eastern Amazonia during the austral summer of 2008–2009 swelled the Amazon River and its tributaries. By July 2009, water levels of the Rio Negro, a major Amazon tributary, reached at Manaus harbor a new record, the highest mark of the last 107 years. During the 2008–2009 hydrological year, the rainy season on northern and northwestern Amazonia started prematurely, and was followed by a longer-than-normal rainy season. An anomalously southward migration of the ITCZ during May–June 2009, due to the warmer than normal surface waters in the tropical South Atlantic, was responsible for abundant rainfall in large regions of eastern Amazonia and Northeast Brazil from May to July 2009. We also compared the flood of 2009 with other major events recorded in 1989 and 1999. The hydrological consequences of this pattern were earlier than normal floods in Amazon northern tributaries, which peak discharges at their confluences with the main stem almost coincided with the peaks of southern tributaries. Since the time displacement of the contribution to the main stem of northern and southern Amazon tributaries is fundamental for damping flood waves in the main stem, the simultaneous combinations of peak discharges of tributaries resulted in an extreme flood.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aceituno P (1988) On the functioning of the Southern Oscillation in the South American sector: Part I. surface climate. Mon Weather Rev 166:505–524
Aragão LEOC, Malhi Y, Roman-Cuesta RM, Saatchi S, Anderson LO, Shimabukuro YE (2007) Spatial patterns and fire response of recent Amazonian droughts. Geophys Res Lett 34:L07701. doi:10.1029/2006GL028946
Beck C, Grieser J, Rudolf B (2005) A new monthly precipitation climatology for the global land areas for the period 1951 to 2000. DWD, Klimastatusbericht KSB 2004, ISBN 3-88148-402-7:181–190
Brown IF, Schroeder W, Setzer A, Maldonado M, Pantoja N, Duarte A, Marengo JA (2006) Fires in rain forests of southwestern Amazonia: multi-national satellite imagery for monitoring and for informing the public. EOS Trans 87:253–264
Chen MP, Xie P, Janowiak JE, Arkin PA (2002) Global land precipitation: a 50-yr monthly analysis based on gauge observations. J Hydrometeorol 3:249–266
Cox PM, Harris PP, Huntingford C, Betts RA, Collins M, Jones CD, Jupp TE, Marengo JA, Nobre CA (2008) Increasing risk of Amazonian drought due to decreasing aerosol pollution. Nature 453:212–215. doi:10.1038/nature06960
CPRM (2009) Relatório da Cheia 2009. Companhia de Pesquisa de Recursos Minerais – CPRM, Diretoria de Hidrologia e Gestão Territorial – DHT, Departamento de Hidrologia – DEHID, Unidade Regional – SUREG-MA, p 23
De Souza EB, Ambrizzi T (2002) ENSO impacts on the South American rainfall during 1980s: Hadley and Walker circulation. Atmosfera 15:105–120
De Souza EB, Kayano MT, Ambrizzi T (2005) Intraseasonal and submonthly variability over the eastern Amazon and Northeast Brazil during the autumn rainy season. Theor Appl Climatol 81:177–191
Espinoza et al (2009) Contrasting regional discharge evolutions in the Amazon basin (1974–2004). J Hydrol 375:297–311
Junk WJ, Bayley PB, Sparks RE (1989) The flood pulse concept in river–floodplain systems. In Dodge DP (ed) Proc. Int. Large River Symp (Lars). Can Spec Publ Fish Aquat Sci 106:110–127
Kalnay E, Kanamitsu M, Kistler R, Collins W, Deaven D, Gandin L, Iredell M, Saha S, White G, Woollen J, Zhu Y, Leetmaa A, Reynolds B (1996) The NCEP/NCAR reanalysis project. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 77:437–471
Lewis SL, Brando PM, Phillips OL, van der Heijden GMF, Nepstad D (2011) The 2010 Amazon drought. Science 331:554. doi:10.1126/science.1200807
Liebmann B, Marengo JA (2001) Interannual variability of the rainy season and rainfall in the Brazilian Amazon Basin. J Clim 14:4308–4318
Marengo JA (1992) Interannual variability of surface climate in the Amazon basin. Int J Climatol 12:853–863
Marengo JA (2004) Interdecadal variability and trends in rainfall in the Amazon basin. Theor Appl Climatol 78:79–96
Marengo JA (2010) Extreme rainfall and the flood of the century in Amazonia 2009. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 97:S149–S149
Marengo JA, Liebmann B, Kousky V, Filizola NS, Wainer I (2001) On the onset and end of the rainy season in Brazilian Amazon basin. J Clim 14:833–852
Marengo JA, Nobre CA, Tomasella J, Cardoso M, Oyama M (2008a) Hydro-climatic and ecological behavior of the drought of Amazonia in 2005. Philos Trans R Soc Lond Biol Sci 21:1–6
Marengo JA, Nobre CA, Tomasella J, Oyama M, Sampaio G, Camargo H, Alves LM (2008b) The drought of Amazonia in 2005. J Clim 21:495–516
Marengo JA, Tomasella J, Alves LM, Soares WR, Rodriguez DA (2011) The drought of 2010 in the context of historical droughts in the Amazon region. Geophys Res Lett. doi:10.1029/2011GL047436
Martini PR, Duarte V, Arai E, Moraes JA (2008) Metodologia de Medição das Extensões dos Rios Amazonas e Nilo utilizando imagens MODIS E GEOCOVER. Proceedings of the XIII Latin American Remote Sensing Symposium, Havana, Cuba, March 2008
Meade RH, José MR, Da Conceição SC, Natividade JRG (1991) Backwater effects in the Amazon River basin of Brazil. Environ Geol Water Sci 18(2):105–114
Molinier M, Guyot JL, Oliveira E, Guimarães V (1996) In L’hydrologie tropicale. IAHS Publ 238:209–222
Moron V, Bigot S, Roucou P (1995) Rainfall variability in subequatorial America and Africa and relationships with the main SST modes (1951Ð1990). Int J Climatol 15:1297–1322
Nobre CA, Shukla J, Sellers P (1989) Impactos climáticos do desmatamento da Amazônia. Climanálise 4:44–53
Poveda G, Mesa OJ (1993) Metodologias de Prediccion de la Hidrologia Colombiana Considerando el Evento El Niño-Oscilacion del Sur (ENOS). Atmosfera, 17, Sociedad Colombiana de Meteorologia, Bogota, Colombia
Reynolds RW, Rayner NA, Smith TM, Stokes DC, Wang W (2002) An improved in situ and satellite SST analysis for climate. J Clim 15:1609–1625
Richey J, Nobre CA, Deser C (1989) Amazon river discharge and climate variability: 1903 to 1985. Science 246:101–103
Ronchail JG, Cochonneau M, Molinier JL, Guyot AG, de Miranda C, Guimarães V, de Oliveira E (2002) Interannual rainfall variability in the Amazon basin and sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific and tropical Atlantic Oceans. Int J Climatol 22:1663–1686
Ronchail J, Labat D, Callède J, Cochonneau G, Guyot JL, Filizola N, Oliveira E (2005) Discharge variability within the amazon basin, regional hydrological impacts of climatic changes — hydroclimatic variability. IAHS Publ 296:21–30
Ropelewski CF, Halpert MS (1987) Global and regional scale precipitation patterns associated with El Niño/Southern Oscillation. Mon Weather Rev 115:1606–1626
Ropelewski CF, Halpert MS (1989) Precipitation patterns associated with high index phase of Southern Oscillation. J Clim 2:268–284
Rudolf B, Hauschild H, Rueth W, Schneider U (1994) Terrestrial precipitation analysis operational method and required density of point measurements. In: Desbois M, Desalmand F (eds) NATO ASI I/26, Global precipitations and climate change. Springer, Berlin, pp 173–186
Rudolf B, Beck C, Grieser J, Schneider U (2005) Global precipitation analysis products. Global precipitation climatology centre (GPCC), DWD. Internet publication, 1–8
Schöngart J, Junk WJ (2007) Forecasting the flood pulse in Central Amazonia by ENSO-indices. J Hydrol 335:124–132
Shi W, Higgins RW, Yarosh E, Kousky VE (2000) the annual cycle and variability of precipitation in Brazil. NCEP/Climate Prediction Center Atlas 9, 25 pp. Available online at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/research_papers/ncep_cpc_atlas/9/index.html, and from the Climate Prediction Center, World Weather Building, Room 605, Camp Springs, MD 20746
Silva VBS, Kousky VE, Shi W, Higgins WR (2007) An improved gridded historical daily precipitation analysis for Brazil. J Hydrometeorol 8:847–861. doi:10.1175/JHM598.1
Tomasella J, Borma LS, Marengo JA, Rodriguez DA, Cuartas LA, Nobre CA, Prado MCR (2010) The droughts of 1996 1997 and 2004 2005 in Amazonia: hydrological response in the river main-stem. Hydrol Processes. doi:10.1002/hyp.7889
Uvo CB, Repelli CA, Zebiak SE, Kushnir Y (1998) The relationships between tropical Pacific and Atlantic SST and Northeast Brazil monthly precipitation. J Clim 11:551–562
Xie P, Arkin PA (1997) Global precipitation: a 17-year monthly analysis based on gauge observations, satellite estimates and numerical model outputs. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 78:2539–2558
Zeng N, Yoon Jin-Ho, Marengo JA, Subramaniam A, Nobre CA, Mariotti A, Neelin D (2008) Causes and impacts of the 2005 Amazon drought. Environ Res Lett 3: doi:10.1088/1748-9326/3/1/014002
Acknowledgements
José A. Marengo, Javier Tomasella and Carlos Nobre were funded by the Brazilian National Research Council CNPq. Additional funding were provided by the projects Rede-CLIMA, the National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change (INCT-CC), the FAPESP–Assessment of Impacts and Vulnerability to Climate Change in Brazil and strategies for Adaptation options project (Ref. 2008/58161-1), and from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement no. 212492 (CLARIS LPB — A Europe-South America Network for Climate Change Assessment and Impact Studies in La Plata Basin). We thank the Brazilian Water Agency (ANA) for providing hydrological data.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Marengo, J.A., Tomasella, J., Soares, W.R. et al. Extreme climatic events in the Amazon basin. Theor Appl Climatol 107, 73–85 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-011-0465-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-011-0465-1