HR: 0800h
AN: H51A-1104    [Abstracts]
TI: SOUTH AMERICAN RIVERS: THE SIGNATURE OF CLIMATE CHANGES IN HYDROLOGICAL INFLOWS
AU: * Pinto, L
EM: leontina@engenho.com
AF: Engenho, Rua Esther Scliar, 70, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22793760 Brazil
AU: Szczupak, J
EM: jsz@engenho.com
AF: Engenho, Rua Esther Scliar, 70, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22793760 Brazil
AU: Macedo, L H
EM: luiz@engenho.com
AF: Engenho, Rua Esther Scliar, 70, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22793760 Brazil
AB: Hydrological inflows impact the whole society, since water is one of the fundamental sources of life. Even though, science has not yet achieved a complete understanding of river dynamics; characterizing and predicting water inflows is still a challenge. Our work intends to offer a new approach to river flow modeling: instead of analyzing local measurements and trying to find a relationship between them, we searched for a possible connection between inflows and global climate variables and trends. This paper describes the first results of our research through a case study with one of the more important South American rivers: Parana, which flows into Itaipu energy plant (one of the largest plants in the world). It is possible to show an impressive correlation (near 1.0) between the water inflow and some climatic variables around the world (circling the globe: Pacific, Indic, Atlantic oceans). These correlations, evaluated for different time lags, are then used to build a propagation model able to predict the river flow months ahead. Finally, it is shown that the "1970 gap" (one of the most interesting climatic characteristics) is found both in the global climatic variables and in the river flow. It is possible to identify a break-point that divides the water flow history into two very distinct quasi-stationary phenomena: pre- and post-70. Curiously, precipitation variables in the same basin do not present such a clear gap. The answer, still under research, may lie in a combination of human actions (use of the land) and changes in soil physical characteristics.
DE: 1655 Water cycles (1836)
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1860 Runoff and streamflow
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (3309)
DE: 1630 Impact phenomena
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting