ASSESSING LONG-TERM DISCHARGES OF THE PLATA RIVER

RAMIRO SAURRAL1*, ROMINA MEZHER1 AND VICENTE BARROS1,2

Foz de Iguazú

Congreso; 8th International Conference of the Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography; 2006

American Meteorological Society

Fig. 1. The Plata Basin (delimited by a red line) and General Circulation Models (GCMs) project a mean temperature rise over the Plata Basin for this century (Camilloni and Bidegain 2005) under all global socioeconomic scenarios. Accordingly, evaporation would also be considerably increased affecting the runoff and the streamflows of the rivers. However, it is worth to keep in mind that these climate models do yet have considerable errors in the simulation of the temperature and precipitation fields over the Plata Basin. Therefore, there are still considerable uncertainties about the potential climate changes that global warming may cause in this region. Nevertheless, given the serious impacts that a diminution of the runoff would cause in the Plata Basin, it is worthwhile to make a rapid exercise to assess the order of magnitude of the potential change in the discharges of its main rivers. The objective of this paper is to show the adjustment of a simple hydrologic model to the mean decadal discharges of the Plata River and to make a sensitive study of discharges of the main river to a mean temperature rise. and discharges. to the mean decadal discharges of the Plata River and to make a sensitive study of discharges of the main river to a mean temperature rise. and discharges.