Mesoscale convective systems simulations over the Amazon basin using a High-resolution climate model

• Grant number: 18/17134-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: December 10, 2018
• End date: June 07, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Geosciences - Meteorology
• Principal Investigator: Tercio Ambrizzi
• Grantee: Amanda Rehbein
• Supervisor: Masaki Satoh
• Host Institution: Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas (IAG). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Tokyo, Japan
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/10557-0 - Mesoscale convective systems over the Amazon basin: present climate and future climate change scenarios, BP.DR

Abstract

Mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) occur spread around world, being associated to very strong thunderstorms, vertical heat transferring, and large amounts of precipitation, among others. Precipitation is fundamental for the ecosystems equilibrium over the Amazon basin, the major watershed in the globe. The climate change is imminent and accelerated by human beings. In this case, prevention and mitigation actions to minimize or try to avoid their impacts depend on the knowledge of the behavior of variables such as temperature and precipitation. Thus, it is important to question how will be the average occurrence and behavior of MCSs in the Amazon basin in a scenario of climate change? Will these systems increase, decrease, or remain approximately constant? Will its intensity increase, decrease, or be the same as in the present? Detecting and tracking MCSs depends on high resolution both spatial and temporal. For the present climate, infrared images from geostationary satellites and/or precipitation dataset are usually used. For the future, we can only use precipitation data from numerical models. The Non-hydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM) is a general circulation model which allows very high resolution global atmospheric circulation simulations (Satoh et al., 2014). The purpose of this investigation is use NICAM simulations to obtain precipitation data and use it to study the future occurrences of MCSs over the Amazon basin, comparing to the present.