Impact of global climate change on the main Brazilian biomes

• Grant number: 17/06627-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date until: September 01, 2017
• End date until: August 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Geosciences - Meteorology
• Principal Investigator: Chou Sin Chan
• Grantee: André de Arruda Lyra
• Host Institution: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (Brasil). São José dos Campos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 14/50848-9 - INCT 2014: INCT for Climate Change, AP.PFPMCG.TEM

Abstract

This project aims to assess the influence of climate change on the major Brazilian biomes: the Amazon, the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest. The analysis will be carried out from the global climate change scenarios, at different emission levels, downscaled to the continental and local scale, using a regional climatic model coupled to a dynamic vegetation model. The regional model will be set with 20 km and 5 km horizontal resolutions. The possibilities of reducing rainfall and increasing temperatures in several regions of the country have been indicated by projections of climate change. If these changes are very intense, the biomes may disappear or be replaced by others more suited to the new climatic condition. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the processes of the biosphere and its interaction with a modified atmosphere. The goals to be achieved in the project refer to the understanding of the long-term feedbacks between the ecosystem and the climate and to assess the potential impacts generated on the vegetation and its properties due to variations in climate and the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The expected results of the project are: 1) Generation of maps with the most vulnerable areas indicating the changes in the spatial distribution of the biomes Amazonia, Cerrado and Mata Atlântica; 2) Increase in the number of members of downscaling climate change projections in high spatial resolution, 20 km above the continent. However, this projections are coupled to a dynamic vegetation scheme; 3) Improvement of tools to study the impacts of climate change from the validation of the Eta-Inland model; 4) Generation of a large dataset for use by the scientific community for further studies. This project has an interdisciplinary character combining research on climate change, atmospheric modeling, vegetation modeling.