About the climate variability and the runoff in the Rio de La Plata Basin

Briefly, the present work has the objective of trying to explain some aspects of the climatic variability in one of the most important basins in the world, with an extension of 3,100,000 km2 and spreading over the most populated territories of five countries. In this work, dealing with the climatic variability of the Rio de la Plata basin, we have worked with the region’s flows as well as the precipitation. Low frequency variabilities are analysed, both in flows and precipitation, and the differences between them are explained. Tendencies and jumps in the mean have been detected during the present century, and the causes have been studied. Natural and anthropogenic causes have been detected in various regions of the basin, and their probable impacts on the regional hydrology have been analysed. The most outstanding result of this work is to show that in a medium term (30/50 years) the flows could decrease, but on average they will not reach historical values previous to 1970 (the driest period) unless important physical changes take place in the basin.