Rain: Record of disasters was record in 2022 in Brazil – 09/24/2023 – Environment

The total number of people affected by disasters linked to rain in Brazil and the number of these occurrences reached their highest in ten years in 2022, show data from the National Civil Defense system.

There were 890,188 people, including deaths, injured, sick, homeless, displaced and missing, 150% more compared to 2012.

They were affected by 2,576 records of intense rain, flash floods, flooding, floods and mass movements (such as landslides), an increase of 402% compared to 2012.

The data comes from S2iD (Integrated Disaster Information System), fed by state and municipal governments.

There is still no consolidated information for 2023, the year in which Brazil, once again, saw cities on the coast of São Paulo, such as São Sebastião, and Rio Grande do Sul destroyed by the power of intense rain.

An intense rain is not just any rain shower. According to Inmet (National Institute of Meteorology), which, in turn, follows Cobrade (Brazilian Disaster Classification and Codification), intense rain can be classified as precipitation “with significant accumulations, causing multiple disasters”.

The historical series of S2iD occurrences begins in 1991, however, a considerable part of the data is retroactive, considering that the system was only established by a decree in September 2012. The following year, for recognition, at federal level, of a emergency situation or state of calamity, the use of S2iD has become mandatory.

Cemaden itself (National Center for Monitoring and Alerting of Natural Disasters) only emerged in July 2011, after the destruction and the enormous number of lives lost due to intense rain and landslides hit the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro.

Looking more closely at the last decade (considering the creation of the information system), in addition to the growth seen in 2022 (of 86%), there were two other occasions with prominent jumps in occurrences: from 2016 (with 566 records) to 2017 (with 1,150) and from 2012 (with 513 records) to 2013 (1,002).

Thinking about people affected in the last decade, there were spikes, in addition to those seen in 2022 (74% increase compared to the previous year), in 2019 (214% and more than 319 thousand affected), 2017 (177% and more than 306 thousand affected) and 2013 (63% and more than 581 thousand affected).

The increase in the frequency of extreme events is proof, according to physicist and USP professor Paulo Artaxo, that the effects of global warming have already arrived.

“What is predicted in the IPCC reports [Painel Internacional para Mudanças Climáticas da ONU] That’s exactly what’s happening now. We see in Libya, Rio Grande do Sul and China, there is a strong increase in the concentration of rain.”

In eastern Libya, floods have already left at least 11,000 dead.

“Before the floods in Libya, there was a historic record in Greece, with 700 millimeters in 24 hours”, recalls climatologist Carlos Nobre. For him, records of intense rain create a scenario that requires quick responses. “The disasters will continue for a long time, until the end of this century. We don’t know what will happen next, but there is no going back.”

To define exactly the association between an extreme weather event and climate change, scientists carry out so-called attribution studies. In these works, evaluating data and projecting scenarios with and without current carbon levels in the atmosphere, researchers are able to estimate whether and how much more likely and/or intense an event in a given place has become due to the climate crisis.

In 2022, the rains that hit the Northeast, mainly Pernambuco, at the end of May and the beginning of June, were studied. Without global warming, the events that occurred on that occasion would have been one-fifth less intense, the authors concluded.

For other recent cases in Brazil, there are no published studies yet.

According to Nobre, a global effort is needed to meet carbon emissions reduction targets, which he considers difficult.

“At the COP [conferência da ONU sobre mudanças climáticas] of Glasgow in 2021, everyone agreed to reduce emissions by almost 50% by 2030, and 2022 was already the year with the most emissions in history.”

For the short term, Nobre points out that the challenge, especially in Brazil, is to make use of existing pre-disaster science. Former director and coordinator of the creation of Cemaden, Nobre says that alert technology needs action among the population.

“When there is an alert, the population needs to be trained. It works, for example, in Rio de Janeiro. The population in risk areas knows where to go when there are alerts or the sirens go off. We have to generalize these systems in all regions, there are more than 1,300 municipalities vulnerable to disasters.”

The involvement of communities, so that there is more confidence in relation to the warnings and necessary responses, is also cited as a challenge by Mariana Nicolletti, coordinator of the Adapta Program, at FGV’s Center for Sustainability Studies (FGVces).

At Cemaden, disaster alerts are evaluated by a team with experts in geology, hydrology, disaster areas and social aspects before issuance. In addition to the 1,038 municipalities monitored in real time, the center issues a daily geo-hydrological risk bulletin for the whole of Brazil.

“The disaster alert takes into account the area that is at risk, the severity of that risk, whether there is a likelihood of landslides and aspects of the population’s social vulnerability,” says Regina Alvalá, the agency’s institutional relations coordinator.

Furthermore, all alert communication, with technical data, should preferably receive feedback from local civil defenses, which have more precise information about the territories in danger.

According to the political articulation coordinator of the National Front of Mayors, Jeconias Rosendo Júnior, “we also need financing lines with accessible and unbureaucratic conditions so that infrastructure works can be made viable.”

For him, it is necessary to increase funds for calamities and protect them from contingencies. “The very constitutional amendment that allowed directly targeted amendments reserves 50% of them for health. Maybe it’s time to think about a mandatory percentage for disasters,” he says.

At the federal level, a group led by PUC-Rio is working on the development of a National Civil Protection and Defense Plan. The document must be delivered, according to a December 2020 decree, within 30 months.

Last week, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) published a call for proposals worth R$12 million for research in short-term lines of research for hydrological and geodynamic events.

In the Environment and Climate Change portfolio, a resolution approved on September 14 by the Interministerial Committee on Climate Change, in its first meeting of the year, established the creation of working groups for mitigation and adaptation to extreme events.

A seminar is also planned for the end of the month to support the decision to declare a permanent state of emergency in more than a thousand municipalities considered by Cemaden to be susceptible to extreme events.