During austral summer, several regions of Brazil are affected by intense precipitation, generally associated with the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ). The general aim of this work was to investigate the influence of spatial and temporal resolution of sea surface temperature (SST) data in simulating precipitation associated with SACZ. Simulations with the model BRAMS (Brazilian developments on the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System) were performed for two SACZ events, occurred in 1998 (El Niño) and 1999 (La Niña). The amount of accumulated precipitation in oceanic SACZ was larger in experiments with warmer SST. Statistical indices were used in order to verify the model's performance in the simulation of precipitation in the regions that compound SACZ (oceanic, coastal and amazon), with different SST datasets. Different time-space resolution of the SST data set does not have significant influence on the SACZ simulated with the BRAMS model. The model is more efficient in identifying occurrence/non-occurrence of rain than in localizing more intense nuclei, and its performance was better (worse) in amazon (oceanic) region of SACZ.
numerical modeling; SACZ; SST; precipitation
