Impacto de mudanças climáticas em cisternas rurais do Nordeste brasileiro.

Abstract

The Brazilian semiarid region comprises an area of great extent and is characterized by a large climate variability associated with the high rate of evaporation and low water holding capacity of the soil, causing water scarcity events. As an alternative to increasing the water supply to the population semiarid, systems for capturing rainwater (SCAC) have expanded throughout the region. Today, over 400,000 households are users of these systems (tanks) and that number is expected to reach one million in the coming years, with continued Schedule 1 Million Cisterns (P1MC). Thus, there is a great need to monitor and simulate the behavior of these systems in order to know the possible transformations-looking, and so assist in decision making on the part of federal, state and municipal governments in an attempt to predict whether there will be enough rainfall in years to meet the demand of these families. The SCAC are highly vulnerable to climate change, especially regarding precipitation, thus it is important to estimate these potential impacts. Through time series of rainfall and future climate projections provided by various global circulation models is possible to create scenarios of climate change and to submit them to a system of reservoir water balance, obtain the vulnerability of these systems to potential changes in climate future. In this study it was observed that the current vulnerability of the SCAC is already significant and that climate change could cause significant impacts. However, adaptive measures the SCAC, for example, can significantly mitigate these impacts.