Gridded Temperature datasets to follow heat and cold waves trends across Bolivia

  Frédéric SATGE, IRD, France
  Paula PACHECO MOLLINEDA, Agua Sustentable, Bolivia
  Jorge MOLINA CARPIO, Instituto de hidraulica e hidrologia, Bolivia
  Ramiro PILLCO, Agua Sustentable, Bolivia
  Marie-Paule BONNET, IRD, France

In South American countries, the meteorological gauges station network is often too scarce to capture temperature variability and trends especially across remote regions such as Andean and Amazonian regions.
In this context, this study assess 4 gridded temperature datasets reliability (T-datasets namely CHIRTS, ERA5, MERRA2 and WFDEI) across Bolivia by comparing its temperature estimates with the one observed from 62 meteorological stations at both daily and monthly time step.
Then, the monthly temperature trends over a 30 years period (1985 – 2015) are derived from all T-datasets and significance are checked using Mann Kendall statistical test.
Finally, the most reliable T-dataset (CHIRTS) is used to analyses heat and cold waves trends in term of frequency, duration, severity, and intensity. The analysis is done at the pixel scale (0.05° approximately 5km) and for the three main watersheds included in Bolivia (Amazon, Altiplano and La Plata). This consideration highlights different trends depending on the considered region and location inside those specific regions.
As heat and cold waves are known to affect agriculture activity (yield reduction) and/or human health (mortality/morbidity rates), understanding how this extreme event evolved over the past represents a key point toward sustainable adaptation in the ongoing  climate change with an expected increase of these events in term of frequency, duration, severity, and intensity.

Mots clés : Temperature datasets|Extreme events|Heat/Cold waves|Trends|Bolivia

A103987FS