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Trends of hydroclimatic intensity in Colombia
  • Oscar J. Mesa,
  • Andrés Ochoa,
  • Viviana Urrea
Oscar J. Mesa
Universidad Nacional de Colombia

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Andrés Ochoa
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
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Viviana Urrea
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
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Abstract

Prediction of changes in precipitation in upcoming years and decades caused by global climate change associated with the greenhouse effect, deforestation, and other anthropic perturbations is a practical and scientific problem of high complexity and consequences. To advance toward this challenge, we look at the daily historical record of all available rain gauges in Colombia and at the CHIRPS database of daily precipitation fields to estimate the HY-INT index of the intensity of the hydrologic cycle \cite{Giorgi2011}. The index is the product of precipitation intensity and dry spell length. Theoretical reasons indicate that global warming should lead to increasing trends in either factor or both. Most of the gauges and pixels do not show a significant trend. Nevertheless, among gauges and pixels with significant trends, the majority (70\%) exhibit a decreasing trend. The geographic distribution of results does not agree between gauges and CHIRPS. We obtain a majority of increasing trends among the 10\% of the stations and 13\% of the CHIRPS pixels with a statistically significant trend for total annual precipitation. This result agrees with previous reports. The sign of the trends for rainfall intensity, number of wet days, the average and maximum length of wet runs is opposite between the two data sets. A possible explanation is the space coverage of the two datasets. There are very few rain gauges in the eastern part of the country, and CHIRPS, with total coverage, shows an East-West dipole in the trends of those variables.
19 Jul 2021Published in Climate volume 9 issue 7 on pages 120. 10.3390/cli9070120