PRECIPITATION AND THE DETERMINATION CRITERION FOR STANDARD-YEARS

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to develop, based on the element of precipitation, the stages for determining standard-years in the state of Ceará, considering the application of the Tavares method (1976). As the selection criterion, a geostatistical spatialization of the data was also applied using the Kernel Smoothing estimator. The database employed is composed of 184 rainfall stations of the Cearense Foundation for Meteorology and Water Resources (FUNCEME), and comprises a 20-year time scale, between 1991-2010. The data were organized according to the criteria adopted by Tavares (1976), which were validated through tools of cross-validation and validation/prediction. After validation, the data were quantified through histograms and spatialized using the Kernel Smoothing estimator. By quantifying the histograms and analyzing the maps, the following years were selected as standard-years for the state of Ceará: 2005, as the dry year, 2004, as the usual year and 2009, as the rainy year.