Classificação climática de thornthwaite e sua aplicabilidade agroclimatológica nos diferentes regimes de precipitação em pernambuco

Abstract

Knowing the annual climatic conditions is of great importance for appropriate planning in agriculture. However, the systems of climatic classification are not widely used in agricultural studies because of the wide range of scales in which they are used. A series with data from 20 years of observations from 45 climatological stations in all over the state of Pernambuco was used. The probability density function of the incomplete gamma distribution was used to evaluate the occurrence of dry, regular and rainy years. The monthly climatic water balance was estimated using the Thornthwaite and Mather method (1955), and based on those findings, the climatic classifications were performed using the Thornthwaite (1948) and Thornthwaite and Mather (1955) for each site. The method of Kriging interpolation was used for the spatialization of the results. The study classifications were very sensitive to the local reliefs, to the amount of rainfall, and to the temperatures of the regions resulting in a wide number of climatic types. The climatic classification system of Thornthwaite and Mather (1955) allowed efficient classification of climates and a clearer summary of the information provided. In so doing, it demonstrated its capability to determine agro climatic zones.