Title
The new historical flood of 2021 in the Amazon River compared to major floods of the 21st century: Atmospheric features in the context of the intensification of floods
Date Issued
01 March 2022
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Marengo J.A.
Schongart J.
Jimenez J.C.
Publisher(s)
Elsevier B.V.
Abstract
In June 2021 a new extreme flood was reported in the Amazon Basin, the largest hydrological system on Earth. During this event water level was above 29 m (the emergency threshold) for 91 days at Manaus station (Brazil), surpassing even the previous historical flood of 2012. Since the late 1990s, 9 extreme floods occurred, while only 8 events were reported from 1903 to 1998. Here we report that the 2021 flood is associated with an intensification of the atmospheric upward motion in the northern Amazonia (5°S-5°N), which is related to an intensification of the Walker circulations. This atmospheric feature is associated with an enhanced of deep convective clouds and intense rainfall over the northern Amazonia that produce positive anomalies of terrestrial water storage over northern Amazonia in the 2021 austral summer. The intensification of Walker circulation is associated with La Niña conditions that characterize the major floods observed in Amazonia during the 21st century (2009, 2012 and 2021). However, during the 2021 an intensification of the continental Hadley circulation is also observed. This feature produces simultaneous dry conditions over southern and southeastern Amazonia, where negative rainfall anomalies, low frequency of deep convective clouds and negative anomalies of terrestrial water storage are observed.
Volume
35
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Oceanografía, Hidrología, Recursos hídricos Meteorología y ciencias atmosféricas
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85121529848
Source
Weather and Climate Extremes
ISSN of the container
22120947
Sponsor(s)
This research was funded by the following agencies and projects: The French AMANECER-MOPGA project funded by ANR and IRD (ref. ANR-18-MPGA-0008) for JCE. The Brazilian National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change Phase 2 under CNPq , grant number 465501/2014-1; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) grant numbers 2014/50848-9 and 2017/09659-6 , the National Coordination for High Level Education and Training (CAPES) , grant number 88887.136402/2017-00 and CNPq grant 301397/2019-8 for JM. The Newton Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership Brazil (CSSP Brazil) Predicting the Evolution of the Amazon Catchment to Forecast the Level Of Water (PEACFLOW) project as well as the working group MAUA (Ecology, Monitoring and Sustainable Use of Wetlands) and the Technical/Scientific Cooperation between INPA and the Max-Planck-Society for JS. The authors acknowledge the contribution of S. Wongchuig and JP Sierra-Perez (AMANECER-MOPGA) for the preprocessing of TWS and deep convective cloud data. The first author dedicates this study to the memory of Pascal Fraizy (1960-2021), whose work greatly advanced the understanding of Amazonian hydrology.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus