Assessments of climate change impacts in semi arid Northeast Brazil

Abstract

The present paper analyses the global changes impacts in reservoir yield and efficiency under two different scenarios: (1) the scenario where precipitation and evaporation increases in the same ratio and the coefficient of surface run-off remains constant (e.g. annual inflow increases in the same ratio also) and (2) the scenario where precipitation and evaporation increases in the same ratio and the coefficient of surface run-off increases according to an polynomial rule. In evaluating the impacts of climate changes in the scenarios above described, there were used two different methodologies. First, the impact in reservoir’s yield and efficiency were estimated using Monte Carlo simulation. In the second approach, the impact was estimated in an infinite reservoir. The annual inflows were considered, in both situations, having different variability pattern, translated by the coefficient of variation (CV=0.2, 1.0 and 1.6).