The flood of 2009 in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

The year of 2009 was atypical concerning hydrology and the period the mean intensity climatic flood of some major rivers of the Amazon Basin. Within this context, we attempt to understand how a heterogeneous response of rivers is related to a large scale precipitation anomaly. This paper presents an analysis of the 2009 flood in Brazilian Amazon. For this, hydrometric data were used to best identify the season at Tabatinga (Rio Solimões), Manaus (Rio Negro), Borba (Rio Madeira) and Óbidos (Amazon) stations and long-wave radiation (LWR) estimated by remote sensing under each analyzed site. The results suggest that the flood causes do not occurred at the same time in the basin, but due to the combined effects of flood-wave translation into the basin and convective activities reaction by rivers in the different analyzed sites. This combined effect produced the highest record flood at the downstream region of the Amazon River as registered in Óbidos, PA (the Óbidos centennial flood).