Assessment of regional and historical climate records for a water budget approach in eastern Colombia

Abstract

Regions located on the eastern side of Colombia are vulnerable to climate change due to the high diversity of fauna and flora located there, the potentially direct impact on agricultural activities, as well as the pressure on water resources. Limited research and work have been conducted to accurately create a description of the climate of these specific regions. The characteristics of the available records, which is valuable information, together with complementary data can be used to simulate the impacts of climate change and the effects it has on the water cycle. A description of the climate for the eastern region of Colombia was made and historical daily records from 669 hydrometeorological stations were considered in order to analyze the robustness and spatial distribution of the data. According to the available data, four of the water districts that compose the eastern region of the country were selected to show both a representative analysis of the climate variability and a consistency analysis using a cross-correlation procedure. A high percentage of missing values was found in the available records; however, with regards to the climatological analysis for the period from 1980 to 2015, 40% of missing values or less seems to be a good threshold for the datasets to be used. Temperature records show monthly small variations and a decreasing average rate from lower to higher elevations, i.e., 5 °C every 1000 m. Precipitation shows different patterns according to the region with monomodal and bimodal patterns. Correlations between datasets of the same region are positive and a significant correlation is obtained with temperature for stations at similar elevations or those located close to each other, and low correlations of precipitation are found. These data records are considered a good source of input data which could be used to perform further analysis such as a climate downscaling procedure, as well as a potential water budget approach for the four studied regions.