Eventos extremos e desastres naturais em serras úmidas do Ceará: o caso do município de Aratuba no maciço de Baturité

Abstract

The current discussion on climate change has generated a series of questions around the world, which is also pertinent to those studying the Brazilian semi-arid region. In this context, the aim of this work is to identify the extreme events and natural disasters that have occurred in the city of Aratuba - CE and to understand the impacts and dynamics of these phenomena, seeking to understand if they are related to the current global climate scenario; in addition to specifically observing the event of March 16, 2023, which caused a natural disaster. The methodology used to detect extreme precipitation events in this research was the Metodologia Estatística dos Eventos Extremos de Precipitação (M3EP), which identifies the days on which extreme events occurred and categorizes them into 3 levels based on the volume of precipitation; data from Civil Defense was used to identify natural disasters and the precipitation data used is from FUNCEME. It was possible to identify that there has been a significant increase in the number of moderate extreme events and that the annual frequency of these events has also increased; while natural disasters do not show great differences between the decades analyzed, but It is possible to observe signs of an increase in the number of disasters. In general, the research showed that climate change has had an impact on the humid enclaves of the semi-arid region of Ceará and that this has been reflected in the frequency of extreme events, which may also be associated with natural disasters.