Precipitation and temperature variability over South America from 1860 to 2100

The objective of this work is to determine the main modes of precipitation variability over South America in different frequency bands (interannual, interdecadal, intraseasonal and synoptic) and their variation in many periods of time. A detailed verification about modes variability from 1860 to 2100 will be presented to show differences between current and past climate, the main changes observed and what would be the main climate expected. Moreover, it was also determined if the number of extreme precipitation events (drier or wetter) experienced significant changes. To this analysis the principal component (PCA) of 30-years moving periods (1860-1890, 1870-1900, ..., 2070-2100) was calculated. Precipitation data from the coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model (HadCM3) developed at the Hadley Centre was used. This data has a resolution of 2.5° (latitude) x 3.75° (longitude), producing a global grid of 96 x 73 grid cells, with a equivalent resolution of 417 km x 278 km at the Equator, reducing to 295 km x 278 km at 45° of latitude (comparable to a spectral resolution of T42).Pages: 1527-153