Journal of Environmental Protection, 2021, 12, 1234-1253
https://www.scirp.org/journal/jep
ISSN Online: 2152-2219
ISSN Print: 2152-2197
DOI: 10.4236/jep.2021.1212073 Dec. 31, 2021 1234 Journal of Environmental Protection
Hydrometeorology of Anthropogenic Erosion in
the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo
Maria del Carmen Sanz Lopez , Augusto José Pereira Filho , Jorge Luiz Diaz Pinaya
Departamento de Ciências Atmosférica do Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas da Universidade de São
Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Abstract
Erosive processes play an important role in environmental degradation. Rain
is the main erosive agent in the Metropolitan Region of Sao Paulo. This study
characterized the erosion events caused by precipitation leveraging the ac-
cumulated daily precipitation estimate generated by the Climate Prediction
Center Morphing Method (CMORPH) and integrating the surface telemetric
network using the Statistical Objective Analysis method (SOAS). From the
Civil Defense database, 400 events were identified in the Metropolitan region
of Sao Paulo (MRSP) area between 2000 and 2013 and, of these, 3 were cho-
sen to carry out meteorological and climatological analyses. In an initial ob-
servation, 58% of them were found to occur in summer. Two regions with the
highest number of erosion events were observed, in the Serra do Mar and
Serra da Cantareira. In the Serra do Mar core, the municipality of São Ber-
nardo do Campo was the one with the greatest amount of erosion. Precipita-
tion volumes were estimated for accumulations of 30 minutes, 1 day, 1 month,
and 1 year. The results, from the 3 events, indicate accumulated precipitation
in 30 minutes from 10 mm to 19.8 mm, daily from 30.8 mm to 69.5 mm, and
1 month from 369.7 mm to 742.5 mm, and 1 year (2010) from 1712.9 mm to
1961.8 mm. In these events, it was noted that there were heavy rains in De-
cember 2009 and January 2010. It was also noted that the CMORPH and
SOAS identify the rain events found by the São Paulo meteorological radar.
The meteorological analyzes of the events based on images from the São Pau-
lo meteorological radar and the Meteosat-9 satellite indicate that the active
precipitation systems are associated with cold fronts, instability lines, and
isolated convection.
Keywords
Hydrometeorology, Anthropogenic Erosion, CMORPH, SOAS
How to cite this paper: Lopez, M.delC.S.,
Filho, A.J.P. and Pinaya, J.L.D. (2021) Hy-
drometeorology of Anthropogenic Erosion
in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo.
Journal of Environmental Protection, 12,
1234-1253.
https://doi.org/10.4236/jep.2021.1212073
Received: December 4, 2021
Accepted: December 28, 2021
Published: December 31, 2021
Copyright © 2021 by author(s) and
Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution International
License (CC BY 4.0).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Open Access