Figure 2: Boundaries of strong (>40%) significant (>20%) ENSO influences on annual

rainfalls in northwestern South America [Rossel and Cadier, 2009].

B. Climate in Ecuador
1. Overview of Ecuador’s Climatology

To understand the implications of climate change on Ecuador, it is useful

to have an understanding of both current and historical climate trends.
We will focus on measures of temperature and precipitation, followed by
some discussion of the role of ENSO.

Gridded temperature and precipitation data were made available by

Willmott, Matsuura, and collaborators at the University of Delaware

5
(hereafter referred to as UDel data) . These gridded data were produced
1

by spatially interpolating temperature and precipitation observations

collected by several sources from land weather station across the globe23
We extract temperature and precipitation data from the UDel data set
over a grid box which corresponds to the common grid box for model
output used in Section III (Figure 3).

i. Temperature in Ecuador

The UDel data is only available over land, whereas the model outputs may
incorporate some fraction of output over the ocean. This potential source
of bias will be discussed in Section IIA. Maps of the average temperature
and precipitation over the whole time series are shown in Figure 4 and
Figure 5.

Figure 3: The grid box used to extract UDel data (only sub-grid boxes over land were
used).

1
The data is provided in ASCII format from the University of Delaware:
http://climate.geog.udel.edu/~climate/. We were provided with a gridded netCDF format version by
University of Washington graduate student Rob Nicholas.
2
Version 2.01 of the 1900 – 2008 temperature product; Matsuura and Willmott, 2009.
3
Version 2.01 of the 1900 – 2008 precipitation product; Matsuura and Willmott, 2009.
6
Figure 4: Temperature from the UDel dataset averaged over the entire time series
(1900-2008). Grey line delineates the coast, and dark black contours delineates
topography. Blue stars show the locations of selected weather stations. Scale in oC.

Figure 5. Precipitation from the UDel dataset, as in Figure 4. Scale in mm/day.

7
Figure 6: Monthly temperature data (UDel), showing a linear warming trend over the
last century of about 0.1o/decade.

A warming trend emerges from the background variability in the

temperature data for the time series (1900-2008) (Figure 6). After
subtracting the trend, we can look at the probability distribution of
temperature anomalies about the mean (Figure 7). This will serve as our
base distribution to compare future temperature predictions in Section
III. It is also instructive to see the temperature probability distribution for
each season (Figure 8).

The seasonal cycle of temperature is plotted in Figure 9. As mentioned in

section IA, the diurnal (day-night) temperature range is bigger than the
difference in mean temperature across the seasons.

8
Figure 7: The frequency of months at, above, or below the mean temperature
(normalized to 0oC to emphasize deviation from the mean) for the grid box.

Figure 8: As in Figure 7, divided up by season. Note how the distribution differs for
each season.

9
Figure 9: Historical seasonal cycle of monthly mean temperature, which varies by
only a few degrees due to proximity to the equator.

ii. Precipitation in Ecuador

The precipitation time series for 1900-2008 is plotted in Figure 10 and

the seasonal cycle is displayed by Figures 11 and 12. The variation
between seasons is much more substantial in precipitation than
temperature.

Figure 10: The historical precipitation record (UDel) for 1900-2008 shows no clear
trend.

10
Figure 11: The seasonal cycle of precipitation for the entire grid box. The wettest
month is March and the driest is August.

Figure 12: Pie chart showing how precipitation is distributed by season.

iii. ENSO in Ecuador

ENSO is a major source of natural variability in Ecuador. The extent to

which ENSO is responsible for temperature and precipitation extremes
will be investigated in this section. We correlate indices that measure the
strength of ENSO with the historical temperature and precipitation
record. The ENSO indices that we use are sea surface temperature (SST)

11
anomalies, based on the regions of the tropical Pacific shown in Figure
13, and accessed from the National Weather Service4.

Figure 13 The sea surface temperature indices of ENSO that we consider are based on
the areas of ocean shown in the map. Niño1+2 is best correlated with precipitation in
Ecuador. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices/oceanic- indices-map.gif)

It results that the SST indices for the combined region of Niño1+2
correlate the best with precipitation anomalies, unsurprising since the
Niño1+2 regions are just off the coast of Ecuador. The correlations are
significant (to 95% confidence) in the months in which precipitation is
greatest (November-May) and the correlation is strongest (and not well
correlated or significant in the other months – June to October).

The SST index that best predicts ENSO, however, is Niño 3.4. Because
Niño 3.4 is removed from the Ecuadorian coast, it is clear that Ecuadorian
precipitation and temperature anomalies are not influencing the SST
index, so it better isolates the extent to which anomalies in Ecuador are
related to ENSO. The results of the correlations with each of the SST
indices are presented in Table 1.

The time series plots of Niño 3.4 anomalies and monthly temperature
anomalies are shown in Figure 14Error! Reference source not found.
Precipitation anomalies are compared with Niño 3.4 in Figure 15. The
best-correlated month (April), which is also one of the rainiest months, is
shown by itself in Figure 16Error! Reference source not found. This
suggests that based on historical data, and baring any drastic change in
the state of ENSO in the future, indices of the strength of ENSO do a good
job of indicating when precipitation in the rainy months is particularly
high.

4
http//www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/

12
Table 1: Correlations of SST index anomalies with monthly precipitation anomalies
from UDel data. Correlations that are significant to the 95% level are in bold.

Mont Niño 1+2 Niño 3 Niño 4 Niño 3.4

h
Jan 0.2748 0.1403 -0.0890 0.0301
Feb 0.4134 0.2448 -0.0470 0.1188
Mar 0.6011 0.4780 0.0284 0.2919
Apr 0.7385 0.6460 0.2683 0.4978
May 0.5039 0.3657 0.1741 0.3055
Jun 0.2530 0.1462 0.0471 0.0525
Jul 0.0351 0.0182 -0.0510 -0.0438
Aug -0.1180 -0.0734 -0.0519 -0.0782
Sep -0.0144 -0.0899 -0.0822 -0.0934
Oct -0.0132 -0.0153 -0.0702 -0.0516
Nov 0.5156 0.4685 0.1914 0.3735
Dec 0.6389 0.5402 0.2409 0.4320

Figure 14: Time series of the relative NINO 3.4 anomaly and the relative surface
temperature anomaly averaged over all of Ecuador.

Figure 15: Time series of the relative NINO 3.4 anomaly and the relative precipitation
anomaly averaged over all of Ecuador.

13
 Precipitation and SST Anomalies for April
6
Precip Anomalies
5 Niño 3.4 Anomalies

3
Anomaly
2

−1

−2

−3
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year

Figure 16: Time series of precipitation anomalies from UDel data – April only,
compared with SST anomalies of Niño1+2 indices.

The monthly correlations in Table 1, are illustrated graphically in Figure

17, for the Niño3.4 index, which best represents ENSO. Also shown are
the monthly correlations of ENSO with temperature, which are notably
stronger (Figure 18). These correlations are for the entire box, covering
most of Ecuador, from which we extracted data.

Figure 17: Bar graph showing the correlation coefficient between the NINO 3.4 index
anomaly and the precipitation anomaly averaged over all of Ecuador. Values that are
statistically significant to 95% are denoted with * and values that are statistically
significant to 99% are denoted with **.

14
Figure 18: Bar graph showing the correlation coefficient between the NINO 3.4 index
anomaly and the temperature anomaly averaged over all of Ecuador. Values that are
statistically significant to 95% are denoted with * and values that are statistically
significant to 99% are denoted with **.

The discussion in Section IA2 indicates that the influence of ENSO should
be looked at spatially (Figure 2). Below we compare the correlation
between ENSO, precipitation, and temperature for the coast and for the
sierra. For precipitation (Figure 19 and Figure 21) the correlations
improve slightly for the coast and deteriorate for the sierra region. For
temperature (Figure 20 and Figure 22) the correlations do not change
(r<0.05) for the coast and decrease for the sierra.

The monthly correlations for ENSO and precipitation and ENSO and
temperature are shown in Figures 19-20 for Ecuador’s coast.

15
Figure 19: Bar graph showing the correlation coefficient between the NINO 3.4 index
anomaly and the precipitation anomaly averaged over the coastal region. Values that
are statistically significant to 95% are denoted with * and values that are statistically
significant to 99% are denoted with **.

Figure 20: Bar graph showing the correlation coefficient between the NINO 3.4 index
anomaly and the temperature anomaly averaged over the coastal region. Values that
are statistically significant to 95% are denoted with * and values that are statistically
significant to 99% are denoted with **.

16
The monthly correlations for ENSO and precipitation and ENSO and
temperature are shown in Figures 21-22 for the Sierra.

Figure 21. Bar graph showing the correlation coefficient between the NINO 3.4 index
anomaly and the precipitation anomaly averaged over the sierra region. Values that
are statistically significant to 95% are denoted with * and values that are statistically
significant to 99% are denoted with **.

Figure 22. Bar graph showing the correlation coefficient between the NINO 3.4 index
anomaly and the temperature anomaly averaged over the sierra region. Values that
are statistically significant to 95% are denoted with * and values that are statistically
significant to 99% are denoted with **.

17
2. Regional Climates within Ecuador

The climate of Ecuador varies regionally due to altitudinal and coastal

effects. The mainland of Ecuador can be divided into three climatic
regimes, including the Amazon Rainforest (east of the Andes Mountains),
the cordillera and highlands of the Andes (running North-South along the
center of the country), and the Pacific Coast (west of the Andes
Mountains) (Figure 23).

One generalization that can be made of equatorial climates is that they

do not have a seasonal cycle akin to higher latitudes. Instead, the tropical
climate of Ecuador can be characterized by a wet season and a dry
season, though each season varies by geographical location.

Four weather stations have been picked out as representations of the

different climates in Ecuador (Figure 24): Quito, in the north, represents
the sierra of the Andes; Puyo, in the southeast, is representative of the
climate in the Amazon Rainforest; Guayaquil, in the southwest,
represents coastal climate; and San Cristóbal is an island in the
Galapagos Archipelago (not a focus of this work).

Figure 23. Map of Ecuador. (Geographic Guide)

18
Figure 24. Mean annual temperature cycle for Quito (Sierra), Guayaquil (Coast), Puyo
(Amazon), and San Cristóbal (Pacific Island) prior to 2000. [Bermeo et al., 2000]

Figure 25. Time series is an example of the diurnal temperature cycle in Quito and
Guayaquil, Ecuador (from April 23 through April 24, 2010). Relative to the annual
cycle, the changes in temperature in the diurnal cycle are much larger. (Weather
Underground).

The mean monthly temperature in all regions is relatively constant

compared to the diurnal cycle (Figures 24, 25), differing by only a few
degrees throughout the year. Even though some regions are cooler (e.g.
the highlands around Quito) and others warmer (e.g. the coast near
Guayaquil), the seasonal differences at each location are not large. The
annual precipitation cycle, on the other hand, varies more distinctly both
temporally and spatially (Figure 26).

19
Figure 26. Mean annual precipitation cycle for Quito (Sierra), Quayquil (Coast), Puyo
(Amazon), and San Cristóbal (Pacific Island) prior to 2000. [Bermeo et al., 2000]

The precipitation cycle for different regions of Ecuador is identified in Table 2

C. Changing Glaciers
1. Andean Glaciers

The Andes hold more than 99% of all tropical glaciers, with Peru holding
~70% of those and the other significant glaciers locations being primarily
in Ecuador and Bolivia. With icemelting throughout the year,
communities throughout the Andes rely on glaciers for some or all of
their seasonal water supplies (especially during dry seasons). The future
of Andean glaciers, however, is not bright. Evidence for past, present,
and future loss of glaciers throughout the Andes is present through
direct observations of mass balance [e.g., Francou et al., 2003; Soruco, et
al., 2009] and indirect indications from studies examining related factors,
. In the coastal region, most of the rainfall is along the northern portion
of the country (Figure 26). Along the Andes, rainfall becomes scarcer with
altitude [Bermeo et al., 2000]. The Amazon has permanent rainfall
throughout the year and is Ecuador’s rainiest region.

Table 2. Rainy seasons and peak rainfall months for different regions of Ecuador.
[Bermeo et al. 2000].

Region Rainy Season Peak Dry Season

Coastal December - May February-March June - December
Sierra October - May October, April June - September
Amazon Throughout NA NA

20