Climatic Variability

Abstract

Currently, the importance in determining the spatio-temporal variability of temperature and precipitation is more prominent, due to concern about climate change, which may be contributing to global warming causing profound changes in organizational structure of ecosystems in many parts of the world. The objective of this study was to analyze the extreme values of annual absolute maximum temperature, minimum temperature and absolute maximum precipitation of the municipality of Campinas through the period of 1890 to 2007. From the historical data of the absolute daily variables, extreme values were selected during each year and a trend analysis of the data was made. The results obtained by the trend analysis showed a significant increase of the absolute minimum temperature throughout the series, while for the absolute maximum and absolute maximum daily precipitation, there was an increase in frequency of extreme events in the last two decades and last decade, respectively.