Hydrological Retrospective and Historical Drought Analysis in a Brazilian Savanna Basin

Abstract

Analyzing historical droughts is essential to improve the assessment of future hydrological risks and to understand the effects of climate variability on streamflow. However, prolonged and consistent hydrological time series are scarce in the Brazilian savanna region. This study aimed to analyze the performance of climate reanalysis products in precipitation estimation, hydrological modeling, and historical drought analysis in a Brazilian savanna basin. For this purpose, precipitation data from the twentieth-century atmospheric model ensemble (ERA-20CM) and the land component of the fifth generation of European ReAnalysis (ERA5-Land) with bias correction were used. The weather variables were obtained from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the hydrological modeling was performed using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The Standardized Streamflow Index (SSI) was used to calculate hydrological drought in the basin. Overall, ERA5-Land performed satisfactorily in precipitation estimation, mainly on the monthly time scale, hydrological modeling, and drought prediction. Since ERA-20CM showed unsatisfactory values for the performance statistics in all analyses, the hydrologic drought (1950 to 2018) was performed with ERA5-Land. The results showed both an increase in the number of dry months and a decrease in wet months in recent decades.