03/24/2024 – 20:22
The rains that hit the Southeast over the weekend left at least 23 people dead in cities in Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro. With the end of summer and heat waves, analyzes already pointed to the possibility of large accumulations in the four states of the region. Warnings about the risks have been issued since last week by governments based on analysis by bodies that monitor the climate.
The rains in question were formed from the clash between a cold front and masses of hot air concentrated in the region, according to Marcelo Seluchi, operations coordinator at the National Center for Monitoring and Alerts for Natural Disasters (Cemaden). “We had a typical summer situation. Lots of heat, humidity, rain showers. On Thursday, a cold front formed from the south with autumn characteristics, more intense, with a colder air mass that moved very quickly,” he recalls.
Despite having been moving quickly until then, the cold front parked over Rio de Janeiro, where the rain was heavy. “It lost speed, a normal characteristic of cold fronts, and ended up stopping there. That's why the rains were more intense. It didn’t rain in São Paulo, for example, like it did in Rio de Janeiro”, explains the coordinator.
Petrópolis, a city in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, recorded 321mm of rain in 24 hours on Saturday. The city had eight fatalities due to landslides that hit the municipality.
Caetano Mancini, meteorologist at Tempo OK, highlights that the weekend's events are considered extreme events, despite this, these situations are not uncommon for the time of year. “Normally, rain events that occur after intense heat waves have the possibility of leading to scenarios like this. The atmosphere has a lot of accumulated energy and the heat acts as a kind of fuel for rain,” he says.
According to forecasts from the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet), the next few months will be marked by a drop in rainfall and an increase in the intensity of cold fronts. This is because autumn, which began on Wednesday the 20th, is a season of transition between the rainy and hot climate of summer and the cold and dry period of winter.
The season will also mark the end of El Niño, an event that abnormally warms the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Despite still being active, this phenomenon would not be directly related to the formation of the rain recorded over the weekend. According to Seluchi, the hot and humid air masses that were observed in the southeast are typical of summer and occur independently of El Niño.
As a backdrop to extreme events like those observed over the weekend, Mancini highlights the impacts of climate change. “It is a kind of guiding thread so that we have a greater frequency of extreme events, whether intense rains, severe droughts, heat and cold waves. This should be more frequent over the next few years,” she says.
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