Brazilian Climate Info
The
Brazilian Climate has to be seein in connection with the
size of Brazil! It covers half of South America and is bigger
than the continental USA. In June you can find snow in southern
Brazil and still sweat in the Amazon rainforest. In January,
every place can be hot and humid, in short: the essence
of tropical.
The Brazilian climate varies from arid scrubland in
the Northeastern interior to the impassable tropical
rainforests of the northerly Amazon jungle and
the tropical eastern coastal beaches. The south
of Brazil is more temperate. Rainy seasons occur
from January to April in the north, April to July
in the northeast and November to March in the Rio/São
Paulo area.
Required
clothing: Lightweight cottons and linens with waterproofing
for the rainy season (November-March). Warm clothing
is needed in the south during winter (June-July). Specialist
clothing is needed for the Amazon region. Warm clothing
is advised
if visiting the southern regions in winter time. The
sunlight is extremely bright and sunglasses are recommended.
What
the U.S. Library of Congress has to say about the
Brazilian
Climate:
Although
90 percent of the country is within the tropical zone, the
climate of Brazil varies considerably from the mostly tropical
North (the equator traverses the mouth of the Amazon) to
temperate zones below the Tropic of Capricorn (23°27'
S latitude), which crosses the country at the latitude of
the city of São Paulo. Brazil has five climatic regions--equatorial,
tropical, semiarid, highland tropical, and subtropical.
Temperatures
along the equator are high, averaging above 25°C, but
not reaching the summer extremes of up to 40°C in the
temperate zones. There is little seasonal variation near
the equator, although at times it can get cool enough for
wearing a jacket, especially in the rain. At the country's
other extreme, there are frosts south of the Tropic of Capricorn
during the winter (June-August), and in some years there
is snow in the mountainous areas, such as Rio Grande do
Sul and Santa Catarina. Temperatures in the cities of São
Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília are moderate
(usually between 15°C and 30°C), despite their relatively
low latitude, because of their elevation of approximately
1,000 meters. Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Salvador on the
coast have warm climates, with average temperatures ranging
from 23°C to 27°C, but enjoy constant trade winds.
The southern cities of Porto Alegre and Curitiba have a
subtropical climate similar to that in parts of the United
States and Europe, and temperatures can fall below freezing
in winter.
Precipitation levels vary widely. Most of Brazil has moderate
rainfall of between 1,000 and 1,500 millimeters a year,
with most of the rain falling in the summer (between December
and April) south of the Equator. The Amazon region is notoriously
humid, with rainfall generally more than 2,000 millimeters
per year and reaching as high as 3,000 millimeters in parts
of the western Amazon and near Belém. It is less
widely known that, despite high annual precipitation, the
Amazon rain forest has a three- to five-month dry season,
the timing of which varies according to location north or
south of the equator.
High and relatively regular levels of precipitation in
the Amazon contrast sharply with the dryness of the semiarid
Northeast, where rainfall is scarce and there are severe
droughts in cycles averaging seven years. The Northeast
is the driest part of the country. The region also constitutes
the hottest part of Brazil, where during the dry season
between May and November, temperatures of more than 38°C
have been recorded. However, the sertão , a region
of semidesert vegetation used primarily for low-density
ranching, turns green when there is rain. Most of the Center-West
has 1,500 to 2,000 millimeters of rain per year, with
a
pronounced dry season in the middle of the year, while
the South and most of the Atlantic coast as far north
as Salvador,
Bahia, in the Northeast, have similar amounts of rainfall
without a distinct dry season.
