Spatiotemporal kriging for days without rainfall in a region of northeastern Brazil

Abstract

Climate change has had several negative effects, including more severe storms, warmer oceans, high temperatures and, in particular, increased drought, directly affecting the water availability in a region. The Northeast Region of Brazil (NEB) is known to have scarce rainfall, especially in the northeastern semiarid region. Droughts and high temperatures in the NEB negatively affect water resources in the region, resulting in a gradual decrease in the storage volume in the reservoirs and contributing to unprecedented water scarcity. The objective of this research was to investigate the spatiotemporal behavior of the number of days without rain (DWR) in a region of northeastern Brazil, making use of the spatiotemporal geostatistical methodology. Cross-validation resulted in an R2 of 71%, indicating a good performance of spatiotemporal kriging for predicting DWRs. The results indicate a spatial dependence for a radius of up to 39 km and that the DWR observations in a certain location influence its estimates in the next 2.8 years. The projection maps from 2021 to 2030 identified a growing trend in the DWRs. With the results presented in our study, it is expected that they can be used by government agencies for the adoption of public policies aiming to minimize the possible damage caused by long periods of drought.