The Northeast region of Brazil (NRB) is the most populous semiarid area in the world and is extremely susceptible to droughts. The severity and duration of these droughts depend on several factors, and they do not necessarily follow the same behavior. The aim of this work is to evaluate the frequency of droughts in the NRB and calculate the return period of each drought event using the copula technique, which integrates the duration and severity of the drought in the NRB in a joint bivariate distribution. Monthly precipitation data from 96 meteorological stations spatially distributed in the NRB, ranging from 1961 to 2017, are used. The copula technique is applied to the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) on the three-month time scale, testing three families of Archimedean copula functions (Gumbel–Hougaard, Clayton and Frank) to reveal which model is best suited for the data. Averagely, the most frequent droughts observed in the NRB are concentrated in the northern sector of the region, with an observed duration varying from three and a half to five and a half months. However, the eastern NRB experiences the most severe droughts, lasting for 14 to 24 months. The probability distributions that perform better in modeling the series of severity and duration of droughts are exponential, normal and lognormal. The observed severity and duration values show that, for average values, the return period across the region is approximately 24 months. Still in this regard, the southernmost tip of the NRB stands out for having a return period of over 35 months. Regarding maximum observed values of severity and duration, the NRB eastern strip has the longest return period (>60 months), mainly in the southeastern portion where a return period above 90 months was observed. The northern NRB shows the shortest return period (~45 months), indicating that it is the NRB sector with the highest frequency of intense droughts. These results provide useful information for drought risk management in the NRB.

Since the early 2000s, Brazil has been one of the world’s leading grain producers, with agribusiness accounting for around 28% of the Brazilian GDP in 2021. Substantial investments in research, coupled with the expansion of arable areas, owed to the advent of new agriculture frontiers, led the country to become the world’s greatest producer of soybean. One of the newest agricultural frontiers to be emerging in Brazil is the one known as SEALBA, an acronym that refers to the three Brazilian states whose areas it is comprised of—Sergipe, Alagoas, and Bahia—all located in the Northeast region of the country. It is an extensive area with a favorable climate for the production of grains, including soybeans, with a rainy season that takes place in autumn/winter, unlike the Brazilian regions that are currently the main producers of these kinds of crops, in which the rainfall regime has the wet period concentrated in spring/summer. Considering that precipitation is the main determinant climatic factor for crops, the scarcity of weather stations in the SEALBA region poses an obstacle to an accurate evaluation of the actual feasibility of the region to a given crop. Therefore, the aim of this work was to carry out an assessment of the performance of four different precipitation databases of alternative sources to observations: two from gridded analyses, MERGE and CHIRPS, and the other two from ECMWF reanalyses, ERA5, and ERA5Land, and by comparing them to observational records from stations along the region. The analysis was based on a comparison with data from seven weather stations located in SEALBA, in the period 2001–2020, through three dexterity indices: the mean absolute error (MAE), the root mean squared errors (RMSE), and the coefficient of Pearson’s correlation (r), showing that the gridded analyzes performed better than the reanalyses, with MERGE showing the highest correlations and the lowest errors (global average r between stations of 0.96, followed by CHIRPS with 0.85, ERA5Land with 0.83, and ERA5 with 0.70; average MAE 14.3 mm, followed by CHIRPS with 21.3 mm, ERA5Land with 42.1 mm and ERA5 with 50.1 mm; average RMSE between stations of 24.6 mm, followed by CHIRPS with 50.8 mm, ERA5Land with 62.3 mm and ERA5 with 71.4 mm). Since all databases provide up-to-date data, our findings indicate that, for any research that needs a complete daily precipitation dataset for the SEALBA region, preference should be given to use the data in the following order of priority: MERGE, CHIRPS, ERA5Land, and ERA5.

In this work, we used the MICE (Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equations) technique to impute missing daily data from six meteorological variables (precipitation, temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and insolation) from 96 stations located in the northeast region of Brazil (NEB) for the period from 1961 to 2014. We then applied tests with a quality control system (QCS) developed for the detection, correction and possible replacement of suspicious data. Both the applied gap filling technique and the QCS showed that it was possible to solve two of the biggest problems found in time series of daily data measured in meteorological stations: the generation of plausible values for each variable of interest, in order to remedy the absence of observations, and how to detect and allow proper correction of suspicious values arising from observations.

Os eventos climáticos extremos demonstram um papel significativo das sociedades, seja por sua intensidade, pela frequência de ocorrência ou pela vulnerabilidade socioambiental. Objetiva-se classificar e quantificar as precipitações na porção leste da região Nordeste (NE) do Brasil através do índice SPI, como também detectar maiores déficits e/ou excesso de precipitação. O Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) foi utilizado para quantificar déficits de precipitação e identificar eventos secos e chuvosos em diferentes escalas temporais, auxiliando no monitoramento da sua dinâmica temporal. No cálculo do SPI foi utilizado a distribuição gama, e estimados os limites de precipitação que representam a cada categoria do índice. Foram utilizados dados pluviométricos das capitais dos estados que compõem no leste do Nordeste do Brasil, no período de 1961 a 2014 provenientes da Agência Nacional das Águas (ANA). A análise de Ondeletas foi utilizada com objetivo de identificar ciclos de extremos pluviométricos e de suas causas através das escalas temporais detectadas em séries de precipitação para as capitais do leste do Nordeste do Brasil. Os resultados mostraram que as ocorrências de secas foram as maiores em todas as cidades, todavia na categoria extrema os eventos chuvosos revelaram-se mais frequentes. Os anos normais foram os mais persistentes em todas cidades analisadas. Recife apresentou máximas ocorrências de eventos chuvosos. Os eventos com intensidade extrema, seja chuvoso ou seco, ocorreram em boa parte da série em anos de ENOS. O SPI revelou-se uma excelente ferramenta na detecção e no monitoramento de seca/chuvas na região analisada. A presença de escalas temporais relacionadas com eventos ENOS, Dipolo do Atlântico, ciclo de manchas solares e Oscilação Decadal do Pacífico foram identificadas em todas as capitais do leste do NEB. Characterization of Drought Events Based on the Standardized of Precipitation Index for the East NortheastA B S T R A C TExtreme weather events demonstrate a significant role for societies, whether by their intensity, frequency of occurrence or socio-environmental vulnerability. Objective-classify and quantify as precipitation in the eastern portion of the Northeast (NE) of Brazil through the SPI index, as well as detect larger deficits and / or excess occurrence. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was used to quantify use deficits and to identify dry and rainy events in different temporal variations, helping to monitor their temporal utilization. No SPI calculations were used for gamma distribution, and estimated capture limits representing each category of the index. Rainfall data were used from the capitals of the states that make up the eastern Northeast of Brazil, with no period from 1961 to 2014, Registration of the National Water Agency (ANA). A wave analysis was used to identify extreme rainfall cycles and their causes caused by temporary variations detected in monitoring series for the eastern capitals of Brazil. The results shown as drought occurrences were the highest in all cities, however in the extreme category of rain events most frequently revealed. The normal years were the most persistent in all cities analyzed. Recife presents maximum occurrences of rain events. Extreme intensity events, whether rainy or dry, occur in much of the series in ENSO years. The SPI revealed an excellent tool for detection and monitoring of drought / gloves in the analyzed region. The presence of temporary variations related to ENOS, Atlantic Dipole, sunspot cycle and Pacific Oscillation events are identified in all eastern NEB capitals.Keywords: SPI; extreme rainfall; drought; Wavelet analysis.

Drought causes serious social and environmental problems that have great impact on the lives of thousands of people all around the world. The purpose of this research was to investigate the trends in humid conditions in the northeast of Brazil (NEB) in the highest climatic precipitation quarters, November–December–January (NDJ), February–March–April (FMA), and May–June–July (MJJ), through the standardized precipitation and evapotranspiration index (SPEI), considering an alternative statistical approach. Precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) time series for the calculation of the SPEI were extracted for the 1794 NEB municipalities between 1980 and 2015 from a grid dataset with a resolution of 0.25° × 0.25° using the bilinear interpolation method. The trends and statistical significance of the SPEI were estimated by quantile regression (QR) and the bootstrap test. In NDJ, opposite trends were seen in the eastern NEB (~0.5 SPEI/decade) and in the south (~−0.6 SPEI/decade). In FMA, most of NEB presented negative trends in the 0.50 and 0.95 quantiles (~−0.3 SPEI/decade), while in MJJ, most of NEB presented positive trends in all quantiles studied (~0.4 SPEI/decade). The results are consistent with observational analyses of extreme rainfall.

Monitoring rainfall in the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA), which comprises most of the largest tropical rainforest and largest river basin on the planet, is extremely important but challenging. The size of the area and land cover alone impose difficulties on the operation of a rain gauge network. Given this, we aimed to evaluate the performance of nine databases that estimate rainfall in the BLA, four from gridded analyses based on pluviometry (Xavier, CPC, GPCC and CRU), four based on remote sensing (CHIRPS, IMERG, CMORPH and PERSIANN-CDR), and one from reanalysis (ERA5Land). We found that all the bases are efficient in characterizing the average annual cycle of accumulated precipitation in the BLA, but with a predominantly negative bias. Parameters such as Pearson’s correlation (r), root-mean-square error (RMSE) and Taylor diagrams (SDE), applied in a spatial analysis for the entire BLA as well as for six pluviometrically homogeneous regions, showed that, based on a skill ranking, the data from Xavier’s grid analysis, CHIRPS, GPCC and ERA5Land best represent precipitation in the BLA at monthly, seasonal and annual levels. The PERSIANN-CDR data showed intermediate performance, while the IMERG, CMORPH, CRU and CPC data showed the lowest correlations and highest errors, characteristics also captured in the Taylor diagrams. It is hoped that this demonstration of hierarchy based on skill will subsidize climate studies in this region of great relevance in terms of biodiversity, water resources and as an important climate regulator.