Climate from a Brazilian viewpoint

Scientist from FAPESP’s Research Program on Global Climate Change and other institutions are developing the Brazilian Model of the Global Climate System

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – In the global climate models detailed in the most recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2007, the Pantanal (marshlands) and the Cerrado (savannas) were depicted as if they were African savannas.

And phenomena like burnings, which could intensify the greenhouse effect and change the characteristics of rain and clouds in a given region, for example, were not characterized because they are not considered relevant to the countries that devised the numerical models utilized in the report. 

In order to create a model with the capacity to generate a climate change scenario with the Brazilian perspective, researchers from diverse institutions, members of FAPESP’s Research Program on Global Climate Change, the Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede Clima) and the National Science and Technology Institute on Climate Change (INCT – MC) are developing the Brazilian Model of the Global Climate System (MBSCG).

Slated for conclusion in 2013, the MSBCG should allow Brazilian climatologists to conduct studies on climate change based on a model which represents important processes for Brazil and that are considered secondary in the foreign climatic models.

“The greater part of these international models does not meet our needs. We have many problems related to climate due to anthropogenic actions like burning and deforestation which have not been reflected and that will now be included in the model that we are developing in Brazil,” says Gilvan Sampaio de Oliveira, a researcher at the Terrestrial System Science Center (CCST) of the National Space Research Institute (Inpe), one of the researchers that is coordinating the MBSCG’s development.

According to him, the Brazilian model will incorporate the hydrological, biological and physical-chemical processes and interactions that are relevant to the regional and global climate system. With this, the system will be able to generate scenarios (with a 10 to 50 kilometer resolution) of regional and global climate changes that could occur in the coming decades to forecast possible impacts on sectors like energy and agriculture.

“With this model, we will have the capacity and autonomy to generate reliable future scenarios, so that the country can prepare to face extreme climatic phenomena,” Sampaio explains to Agência FAPESP.

The first version of the Brazilian model with indications of what could occur in the next 50 years should be ready by the end of 2011.

To this end, this February researchers began installing and running a preliminary model on the Tupã supercomputer, installed in the Center for Weather Forecasting and Climatic Studies (CPTEC) located in Cachoeira Paulista (SP). The preliminary model has computational modules that analyze climatic phenomena occurring in the atmosphere, the ocean and on the earth’s surface.

The computational modules will be gradually integrated to other components of the model, which will evaluate the impacts of vegetation, the carbon cycle, sea ice and atmospheric chemistry on the environment. In counterpart, another component will indicate the possible influence of climate change on agricultural crops like sugarcane, soybean, corn and coffee. 

“In the future, we can attempt to estimate the productivity of sugarcane and soybean, for example, given the increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” says Sampaio.

IPCC Class

According to the scientist, as the final version of MSBCG will only be ready in 2013, the Brazilian climatic model will not be utilized in the next report the IPCC releases in 2014, the AR-5. But the model that will be used by the Intergovernmental Panel to conduct AR5 simulations, the HadGEM2, will boast Brazilian participation.

Through cooperation between the United Kingdom’s Hadley Center and the Inpe, Brazilian researchers have introduced computational modules into the international model that will evaluate the impact of smoke plumes produced by burnings and forest fires on the global climate, which until then had not been taken into consideration in climatic projections.

With this, the model was named HadGEM2-ES/Inpe. “We will conduct simulations considering these components that we introduced in this model,” explains Sampaio.

In 2013, when the final version of the Brazilian of the Global Climate System will be concluded, the system will gain two computational modules: one for land and one for meteorological use, with high spatial resolution. In the same year, the first simulation of high resolution regional models will also begin for development of a climatic model for all of South America (with 1 to 10 kilometer resolution).

“We still take months or even years to generate regional scenarios. With the new supercomputation system, regional climatic modeling will gain new scale,” affirms Sampaio.

Read the report published in Pesquisa FAPESP magazine on the Brazilian climate model.