What is it about?

This article identifies the weather patterns that caused heavy rainfall in Paraguay and nearby countries from November 2015 to February 2016. We show that the weather patterns that caused heavy rainfall were the same patterns that typically cause heavy rainfall, but that they occurred more frequently than normal. We showed that this was partly because of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation pattern, but that other climate patterns also contributed to this heavy rainfall. We also assess the extent to which numerical weather prediction models were able to predict the risk of flooding.

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Why is it important?

The heavy rainfall that occurred from November 2015 to February 2016 caused flooding, which in turn caused evacuation of over 150000 people in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. The past few years have seen frequent flooding in this region, so this paper is a needed first step in the chain of (i) understanding what causes these events; (ii) predicting these events; and (iii) adapting to future floods.

Perspectives

I have spent many months in Paraguay and am very pleased to have the opportunity to contribute science which may help the Paraguayan people mitigate the damages that future floods may cause.

James Doss-Gollin
Columbia University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Heavy Rainfall in Paraguay during the 2015/16 Austral Summer: Causes and Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Predictive Skill, Journal of Climate, September 2018, American Meteorological Society,
DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-17-0805.1.
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