Climate Profiles in Brazilian Microregions

Abstract

Brazil’s territory is considerably large and characterized by a variety of climate patterns, which allows the identification of regional climate specificities. The objective of this study was to identify a typology of climatic characteristics for the microregions of Brazil using the grade of membership (GoM) method, which is a multivariate technique based on the fuzzy sets theory. The meteorological variables used were: precipitation (mm), relative humidity (%), maximum and minimum temperature (°C) and wind speed (m/s), obtained from the interpolated database elaborated by Xavier comprising the period from January 1981 to December 2013. Three predominant homoclimatic profiles were found. The GoM method also allowed the identification of five mixed profiles, which is unprecedent in studies in Brazil and corroborates the regional climate diversity in the country. Furthermore, the heterogeneities of Brazilian climates could be better outlined. The extreme profiles—“predominant 1—P1”, “predominant 2—P2” and “predominant 3—P3”—accounted for 42.9% (236) of the total microregions. Additionally, approximately half (53.9%) of the microregions were classified as featuring characteristics of at least two profiles—that is, they presented mixed profiles with hybrid characteristics. These hybrid microregions were located mostly at transition zones between climates.