ENSAIO SOBRE ÍNDICES DE EXTREMOS CLIMÁTICOS NO LITORAL BRASILEIRO

Under the theme of Marine Geography and specifically seeking understandings about climate variability and climate change, this article aims to present and discuss the results of climatic extremes indexes distributed over 118 stations on the Brazilian coast and to point out the trends found in the time frame between 1961 and 2020. For this purpose, 18 indexes were selected from the Climdex Project, organized to enable the analysis and statistical responses on climatic extremes of maximum, minimum temperatures, and precipitation. Free programmatic tools were used for all calculations and the presentation of results. As for the results, they point to an increase in the minimum, average and maximum rates of maximum and minimum temperatures for the Brazilian coast in the order of + 0.04ºC and + 0.03ºC per year. There is also a clear and similar trend towards a reduction in the percentage of colder days (-0.08%) and colder nights (-0.07%) per year. Annual rates of increase in the percentage of warmer days (+ 0.12%) and warmer nights (+ 0.10%) are also similar. The annual number of summer days has been increasing at rates of 9 days per decade and the number of tropical nights has increased by about 12 days per decade. As for precipitation rates, the tendency for the Brazilian coast is to decrease in the order of - 4.1 mm per year, but this information must be contextualized on the regional scale since the discrepancies are not small. Finally, it is argued that the tools for the analysis and interpretation of a large set of information and climatic data are fundamental to diagnose and predict the trends of climatic extremes and, specifically for the Brazilian coast, it allows to a relevant research agenda.