TREND ANALYSIS OF CLIMATE ELEMENTS IN MARINGÁ, PR

Abstract

Discussions about climate change and global warming raise questions about what is occurring in the atmosphere at a local level. Trend and variability studies represent ways to answer these questions, and despite being associated, the concepts are distinct. In this paper, a time series for the city of Maringá, in the state of Paraná (PR), Brazil, was used to identify trends in temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation. To verify the normality of the data, the Shapiro-Wilk and Lilliefors tests were applied. Based on their results, the method predominantly used to estimate annual and seasonal trends was simple linear regression. Based on the annual trend analysis, the temperature modalities considered showed an increasing trend, while precipitation and relative humidity did not show a significant trend. Through the analysis of seasonal trends, in the parametric method, summer, winter, and spring showed an increasing trend for the temperature modes. There was a significant trend for temperature and maximum temperature for autumn. Relative air humidity and precipitation did not show a significant trend. Through the non-parametric method, average air temperature and precipitation in autumn showed a significant decreasing trend.