Intense rainfall over Southeastern Brazil frequently causes flooding and landslides, mainly in Serra do Mar region. For this reason, the study of significant rainfall events over this region is important to understand their behavior and improve their representation in numerical prediction models. Two cases of intense rainfall were chosen for this study (02/02/1983 and 25/05/2005). Both cases were associated with a convective cluster embedded in a frontal system. The synoptic analysis depicted, in the first case, a type Y configuration, consisting of a frontal system and cloudiness associated with the Bolivian High and the Upper Level Cyclonic Vortex over Northeastern Brazil. The second case consisted of squall lines associated with a frontal system. Despite some slight phase errors regarding the location of the most significant rainfall sector, the atmospheric pattern associated with the extreme rainfall cases over Serra do Mar were well simulated by the regional eta model, including the magnitude of the intense precipitation. Mesoscale features were analyzed in the high resolution model outputs, such as the sea breeze (first case) and orography (first and second case), which contributed to the significant rainfall near the coast in both cases. High values of instability indexes were also obtained from the model results indicating a good performance for intense precipitation alert.
Precipitation; Serra do Mar; Eta Model; Instability Indeces
