3 - Assessment of the impacts of climate variability and change on the hydrology of South America

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Very few studies of the impacts of climate variability and change on water resources systems have been reported in the literature. Notably, the only published report dealing specifically with South America presents the efforts of the US Environmental Protection Agency in cooperation with the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, to analyze the impacts of climate change in the Uruguay River basin. Another report (Stakhiv et al., 1993) describes the results of an impact study in the Orinoco River basin in Venezuela. Unfortunately, the results of these studies were not available at the time of preparation of this report, nor those of a Russian–Argentinean effort in Argentina.

Due to its strategic importance for the world's climate, the Amazon basin has been the subject of many studies of hydroclimatology, involving Brazilian and other international institutions. These early efforts included the ARME and ABRACOS projects, developed by institutions in Brazil and the UK, whose objective was to assess the forest water consumption and exchange with the surrounding atmosphere. A major scientific experiment involving all the Amazonian countries and the international community is now being planned: the LAMBADA project (now part of the broader LBA project) will focus on the hydroclimatology of the region and will provide important data for future studies of the impacts of climate change on tropical regions.

This chapter describes the above studies and the planned experiment, and presents their main results.