Near-surface climatic patterns and statistical downscaling in complex terrain at south-east Brazil

Abstract

Near surface climate is crucial for research and applications in various fields, such as hydrology, agriculture and ecology. In Brazil, currently used sources of surface climate information fail to represent the spatio-temporal variability at the local and mesoscale. This is especially true in montane terrain where the variability is exacerbated by a broad-spectrum of process controlled by the landscape morphology. In this project we will investigate the surface climatic patterns in the coastal and montane region of South-East Brazil and develop statistical downscaling models to obtain high resolution field of temperature, humidity and wind components from network station observations, Global Climate Model outputs, satellites products and Digital Elevation Model features both at the local and meso-scale. (AU)