PRECIPITATION OSCILLATION, RELATIVE HUMIDITY AND MINIMUM AIR TEMPERATURE IN BARBALHA - CE, BRAZIL

Abstract

Oscillations are known from climatic dynamics, and the impact produced by this phenomenon, even within expectations, can have significant consequences on human activities. The work aims to analyze the fluctuations of precipitation, relative humidity and minimum air temperature, focusing on such variations as a means to understand future changes. Precipitation, minimum air temperature and monthly and annual relative humidity data were used for the period 1973 to 2014. Irregular rainfall can cause the occurrence of dry spells, that is, rainfall with irregular spatial and temporal distribution, causing water deficits in the soil, having a direct effect on agricultural crops, such as reduction in plant development, abortion and fall of flowers, grain filling or even the total loss of the plantation. The minimum temperature in the study area demonstrates changes in its oscillations in the early morning period, leaving the weather more unstable and heated by dawn in the last decade. The minimum air temperature fluctuations result from the synoptic systems acting during the rainy and dry periods, as well as from the impacts on the environment, and these fluctuations may be related to the factors that provoke and/or inhibit the interregional plyviometric indices. The relative humidity of the air can be an active or passive contributor to soil degradation and desertification, because with other meteorological elements benefiting or disfavoring soil dryness and defragmentation, it can contribute to the increase or reduction of fire and air quality.