{"id":146926,"date":"2014-04-17T16:13:02","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T19:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=146926"},"modified":"2014-06-06T16:21:08","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T19:21:08","slug":"climate-records-countryside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/climate-records-countryside\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate records in the countryside"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Record

GERHARD WALLER \/ ESALQ-USP<\/span>Record books from 1917, from the Esalq weather stationGERHARD WALLER \/ ESALQ-USP<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The systematic collection of climate data in Brazil began in the first half of the 19th<\/sup> century at the Imperial Observatory of Rio de Janeiro, today the National Observatory. The Campinas Institute of Agronomy (IAC) installed its first weather station in 1890 in the interior of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, with an objective beyond that of simply understanding weather behavior: it was intended more specifically for research on the influence of climate on agricultural crops. \u201cOn pages measuring one meter wide, the observer\/technicians recorded information on temperature, humidity, solar radiation and cloud cover five times a day,\u201d says Orivaldo Brunini, coordinator of the IAC\u2019s Integrated Center for Agrometeorological Information, an agency connected with the S\u00e3o Paulo State Department of Agriculture and Supply.<\/p>\n

The pioneering mechanical station was put into operation three years after the establishment of the IAC. Three technicians took turns reading the data every day, without exception. \u201cThe instruments\u2014the most modern ones of the era\u2014came from Germany,\u201d Brunini says. The data were subsequently analyzed by agronomists, but it took time for the information to reach farmers. Over time, other cities in the interior received their stations. In 1956, the Institute began to produce annual agrometeorological almanacs and, soon afterwards, monthly bulletins. Today there are 150 stations operating with automatic sensors that eliminate reliance on observers and provide real-time information on the Internet<\/a>. The IAC receives 120,000 hits per month, or 4,000 per day. The data are used to guide farmers and Civil Defense personnel in responding to floods and fires.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cumulative historical material provides data series that help us study climate change, and it is part of the regional history because it contains the record of major droughts and frosts, for example,\u201d Brunini says. He notes that the record shows only two service interruptions. These occurred during the Revolution of 1932, in the month of July when S\u00e3o Paulo State troops stayed at the IAC facility where the station was located, and in October when federal forces were at the same site.<\/p>\n

\"Esalq

IAC ARCHIVES<\/span>Esalq weather station in the 1930sIAC ARCHIVES<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The year 1917 marks the beginning of the observations that led to S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s second-oldest data series, at the station installed at the former Practical Agriculture School of Piracicaba, today the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Esalq-USP). \u201cThe readings were taken four times a day, one of which was sent by telegraph to the Office of Meteorology and Astronomy at the National Observatory\u2014today the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET)\u2014to compile the daily meteorological information and weather forecasts for the entire country,\u201d says Luiz Roberto Angelocci, a senior professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at Esalq. Beginning in the 1960s, the studies focused more specifically on analysis of the climate-agriculture connection and, in late 1996, automated data collection began, although conventional collection was not eliminated. The data are available on the internet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Angelocci is working on analyzing the historical data series generated during the 97 years of record-keeping. \u201cThe plan is to do a complete reanalysis of the series and improve data exploration,\u201d he says. Long series are essential to achieving an understanding of climate and the causes of climate variability. They are also important for distinguishing between a mere climate anomaly and a potential trend. \u201cThe fact is that some anomalies are not as rare as they seem. The current dry spell in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, for example, has occurred similarly in other years,\u201d Angelocci notes. He observed that, in five years of the series, the first of which occurred in 1935, rainfall was less than 40% of the average for the entire series for the month of January. \u201cYou can\u2019t categorically say whether or not the current drought is the result of recent climate change, when we know that similar periods have occurred in the past 97 years,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"S\u00e3o Paulo State weather stations first appeared in Campinas and Piracicaba","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[217,241],"coauthors":[104],"class_list":["post-146926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospect","tag-climate","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146926"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=146926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}