Waldo Lavado

• PhD
• Research Director at Servicio Nacional de Meteorología e Hidrología del Peru

La precipitación representa uno de los elementos más importantes dentro del ciclo del agua para la representación de la oferta hídrica en cuencas hidrográficas. Debido a una inadecuada distribución de estaciones, seguridad, relieve, accesibilidad, etcétera, existe escasez de estos datos en cuencas andinas del Perú. Esto representa uno de los princi...

Over the past 20 years, the Hydrological Ensemble Prediction Experiment (HEPEX) international community of practice has advanced the science and practice of hydrological ensemble prediction and its application in impact- and risk-based decision-making, fostering innovations through cutting-edge techniques and data that enhance water-related sectors...

In the face of climate change and increasing anthropogenic pressures, a reliable water balance is crucial for understanding the drivers of water level fluctuations in large lakes. However, in poorly gauged hydrosystems such as Lake Titicaca, most components of the water balance are not measured directly. Previous estimates for this lake have relied...

The Tacna region, situated in southwestern Peru, is distinguished by its desert and Andean zones, resulting in significant climatic variability. However, changes in future precipitation and temperature patterns could significantly impact sectors such as agriculture, energy, and water resources. In this context, this research analyzes climate scenar...

Changes in patterns of accumulated rainfall, as well as the rainy season onset, cessation and duration, can impact the availability of water resources and sectors such as agriculture, affecting the livelihoods of the population. The knowledge of these changes is crucial for regions driven by strong precipitation variability such as the Andean count...

Water plays a critical role in adapting food and energy systems to climate change in the Andes. However, robust climate solutions that work across sectors have not been explored for these working landscapes. Here we develop a framework consisting of high-fidelity catchment and hydropower models while considering climate and other uncertainties in a...

This study investigates the hydrological dynamics of the Pativilca Basin in the Southern Hemisphere using the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model. Seventy-seven watersheds across a mountainous region were analyzed using elevation data, land cover, soil type, and gridded meteorological products (RAIN4PE and PISCO) for hydrological simulation...

La frecuencia y magnitud de los eventos climáticos extremos de precipitación han aumentado de forma significativa en varios países del mundo, incluido Perú. Estos hechos causan pérdidas económicas y humanas, especialmente en países en vías de desarrollo. La información y metodologías que permitan prevenir o diseñar estrategias para afrontarlas son...

This study estimates the water balance of a poorly-gauged large lake using an integrated modeling framework that accounts for natural hydrologic processes and net irrigation consumption. The modeling framework was tested on Lake Titicaca, located in the Altiplano of the Central Andes of South America. We used a conceptual approach based on the Wate...

This chapter provides summaries of the 2023 temperature and precipitation conditions across seven broad regions: North America, Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. In most cases, summaries of notable weather events are also included. The base period used for these analyses is 1991...

Lakes are considered as sentinels of climate change. Water stored in lake is an important component of the land water cycle. Earth Observations offer a unique tool to monitor lakes extent, water levels variations, and hence changes in water volume combing these two variables or one of them with lakes bathymetry. We present here, surface water volum...

The 2022-23 hydrological year in the Lake Titicaca, Desaguadero River, and Lake Poopó hydrological system (TDPS) over the South American Altiplano constituted a historically dry period. This drought was particularly severe during the pre-wet season (October–December), when the TDPS and the adjacent Andean-Amazon region experienced as much as 60% re...

In 2023 Amazonia experienced both historical drought and warm conditions. On October 26th 2023 the water levels at the port of Manaus reached its lowest record since 1902 (12.70 m). In this region, October monthly maximum and minimum temperature anomalies also surpassed previous record values registered in 2015 (+ 3 °C above the normal considering...

The diurnal cycle of total hydrometeor availability and its associated patterns of atmospheric circulation is studied over a connected Andes–Amazon (A–A) system in the central region of Peru during the summer season. Surface precipitation depends on the amount of hydrometeors that occur in the atmosphere and its atmospheric dynamics. Hydrometeors a...

La precipitación representa uno de los elementos más importantes dentro del ciclo del agua para la representación de la oferta hídrica en cuencas hidrográficas. Debido a una inadecuada distribución de estaciones, seguridad, relieve, accesibilidad, etc., existe escasez de estos datos en cuencas andinas del Perú. Esto representa uno de los principale...

In regions with limited precipitation information, like Peru, many studies rely on precipitation data derived from satellite products (SPP) and model reanalysis. These products provide near-real-time information and offer global spatial coverage, making them attractive for various applications. However, it is essential to consider their uncertainti...

The watershed hydrologic conditions in the Madre de Dios (MDD) Basin in the Peruvian Amazon have been irreversibly impacted by deforestation and changes in land cover. These changes have also had detrimental effects on the geomorphology, water quality, and aquatic habitat within the basin. However, there is a scarcity of hydrological modeling studi...

Gridded high-resolution climate datasets are increasingly important for a wide range of modelling applications. Here we present PISCOt (v1.2), a novel high spatial resolution (0.01°) dataset of daily air temperature for entire Peru (1981–2020). The dataset development involves four main steps: (i) quality control; (ii) gap-filling; (iii) homogenisa...

In soil erosion estimation models, the variables with the greatest impact are rainfall erosivity (RE), which is the measurement of precipitation energy and its potential capacity to cause erosion, and erosivity density (ED), which relates RE to precipitation. The RE requires high temporal resolution records for its estimation. However, due to the l...

Flood modeling and forecasting are crucial for managing and preparing for extreme flood events, such as those in the Tropical Andes. In this context, assimilating streamflow data is essential. Data Assimilation (DA) seeks to combine errors between forecasting models and discharge measurements through the updating of model states. This study aims to...

In regions with limited precipitation information like Peru, many studies rely on precipitation data derived from satellite products (SPPs) and reanalysis products. These products provide near-real-time information and offer global spatial coverage, making them attractive for various applications. However, it is essential to consider their uncertai...

Flood modeling and forecasting are key to managing and preparing for extreme flood events. Hydrological flood forecasting aims to predict the system response to different input changes with minimum uncertainties. In that sense, streamflow Data Assimilation (DA) seeks to combine errors between hydrological model and water discharge observations thro...

The watershed hydrologic conditions in the Madre de Dios (MDD) basin in the Peruvian Amazon have been irreversibly impacted by deforestation and changes in land use cover. These changes have also had detrimental effects on the geomorphology, water quality, and aquatic habitat within the basin. However, there is a scarcity of hydrological modeling s...

This chapter provides summaries of the 2022 temperature and precipitation conditions across seven broad regions: North America, Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. In most cases, summaries of notable weather events are also included. Local scientists provided the annual summary fo...

In soil erosion estimation models, the variable with the greatest impact is rainfall erosivity (RE), which is the measurement of precipitation energy and its potential capacity to cause erosion, and erosivity density (ED), which relates RE to precipitation. The RE requires high temporal resolution records for its estimation. However, due to the lim...

As the adverse impacts of hydrological extremes increase in many regions of the world, a better understanding of the drivers of changes in risk and impacts is essential for effective flood and drought risk management and climate adaptation. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive, empirical data about the processes, interactions, and fe...

Study region A total of 11,913 sub-catchments in Peru and transboundary catchments with neighboring countries in South America. Study focus This paper aims to develop a national hydrological model using physiographic and climatic characteristics to identify donor and receptor sub-catchments (sub-zones). Therefore, we use the hydrometeorological PI...

Water is an essential resource for social and economic development. The availability of this resource is constantly threatened by the rapid increase in its demand. This research assesses current (2010–2016), short- (2017–2040), middle- (2041–2070), and long-term (2071–2099) levels of water security considering socio-economic and climate change scen...

La frecuencia y magnitud de los eventos climáticos extremos de precipitación han aumentado significativamente en varios países del mundo, incluido Perú. Estos hechos causan pérdidas económicas y humanas, especialmente en países en vías de desarrollo. La información y metodologías que permitan prevenir o diseñar estrategias para afrontarlas son esca...

This work aims to generate and evaluate regional rainfall thresholds obtained from a combination of high-resolution gridded rainfall data, developed by the National Service of Meteorology and Hydrology of Peru, and information from observed shallow landslide events. The landslide data were associated with rainfall data, determining triggering and n...

As the adverse impacts of hydrological extremes increase in many regions of the world, a better understanding of the drivers of changes in risk and impacts is essential for effective flood and drought risk management and climate adaptation. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive, empirical data about the processes, interactions and fee...

Gridded high-resolution climate datasets are increasingly important for a wide range of modelling applications. Here we present PISCOt (v1.2), a novel high spatial resolution (0.01°) dataset of daily air temperature for entire Peru (1981-2020). The dataset development involves four main steps: i) quality control; ii) gap-filling; iii) homogenisatio...

The present research has assessed the spatial distribution of drought risk in the Titicaca Lake Basin located in Peruvian territory for a district scale, based on hazard and vulnerability. Drought hazard has been quantified with the deficit of precipitation using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for a time scale of 3-months, and the vulne...

This article introduces a high-resolution (0.1°) gridded dataset of hourly precipitation across Peru for the period 2015-2020, called PISCOp_h. The product was developed using a temporal disaggregation technique based on the gridded daily precipitation dataset PISCOp and additional data from 309 automatic weather stations and three satellite precip...

Risk management has reduced vulnerability to floods and droughts globally1,2, yet their impacts are still increasing³. An improved understanding of the causes of changing impacts is therefore needed, but has been hampered by a lack of empirical data4,5. On the basis of a global dataset of 45 pairs of events that occurred within the same area, we sh...

The objective of this work was to generate and evaluate regional rainfall thresholds obtained from a combination of high-resolution gridded precipitation data (PISCOpd_Op), developed by the National Service of Meteorology and Hydrology of Peru (SENAMHI), and information from observed shallow landslide events. The landslide data were associated with...

A new FAO Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration gridded dataset is introduced, called PISCOeo_pm. PISCOeo_pm has been developed for the 1981–2016 period at ~1 km (0.01°) spatial resolution for the entire continental Peruvian territory. The framework for the development of PISCOeo_pm is based on previously generated gridded data of meteorolog...

TOPMODEL is a widely used, physically based distributed rainfall-runoff model developed in the 1970s that has been used to model multiple watersheds from the Latin American sphere. However, to the best of our knowledge, it has not been applied in Peruvian watersheds. This contribution reports (1) the adequation of the particle swarm optimisation (P...

There is growing interest in the international scientific community in characterizing climate variability in Antarctica because of the continent's fundamental role in regulating the world's climate. Researchers have intensively studied the Antarctic Peninsula since the warming that began in the mid‐1950s. This was followed by a subsequent cooling p...

The biodiversity present in Peru will be affected by climatic and anthropogenic changes; therefore, understanding these changes will help generate biodiversity conservation policies. This study analyzes the potential distributions of biomes (B) in Peru under the effects of climate change. The evaluation was carried out using the random forest (RF)...

RAIN4PE is a novel daily gridded precipitation dataset obtained by merging multi-source precipitation data (satellite-based Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation, CHIRP (Funk et al. 2015), reanalysis ERA5 (Hersbach et al. 2020), and ground-based precipitation) with terrain elevation using the random forest regression method. Furthermore, RAI...

A novel approach for estimating precipitation patterns is developed here and applied to generate a new hydrologically corrected daily precipitation dataset, called RAIN4PE (Rain for Peru and Ecuador), at 0.1° spatial resolution for the period 1981–2015 covering Peru and Ecuador. It is based on the application of 1) the random forest method to merge...

Es altamente confiable que el cambio climático impactará sobre las condiciones hidroclimáticas a nivel global. Dado que la cuantificación de la producción de agua (escurrimiento) es importante para una adecuada gestión de los recursos hídricos y sobre todo tomando en cuenta el impacto del cambio climático, evaluar estos posibles impactos es importa...

Se espera que el cambio climático provocará algunos cambios importantes en las condiciones hidroclimáticas a nivel global. Dado que la aridez es un indicador de la deficiencia de agua en una determinada región, sus cambios en las condiciones climáticas futuras son importante para una gestión adecuada del agua. En este trabajo se emplea dos indicado...

El presente trabajo describe con base científica el Atlas de Hidrología superficial en el Perú: Una evaluación presente y futura, en la cual se describe la disponibilidad hidrológica del Perú a escala de las unidades hidrográficas del país para las tres vertientes. Para este propósito se ha construido un modelo hidrológico a escala de todo el Perú...

Quantification of the surface water offer is crucial for its management. In Peru, the low spatial density of hydrometric stations makes this task challenging. This work aims to evaluate the hydrological performance of a monthly water balance model in Peru using precipitation and evapotranspiration data from the high-resolution meteorological PISCO...

Abstract Background Global temperatures are projected to rise by ≥2 °C by the end of the century, with expected impacts on infectious disease incidence. Establishing the historic relationship between temperature and childhood diarrhea is important to inform future vulnerability under projected climate change scenarios. Methods We compiled a nationa...

This study investigates the applicability of Satellite Precipitation Products (SPPs) in near real-time for the simulation of sub-daily runoff in the Vilcanota River basin, located in the southeastern Andes of Peru. The data from rain gauge stations are used to evaluate the quality of Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM–Early (IMERG-E), Gl...

This article identifies homogeneous precipitation regions in Ecuador and their relationship to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), using monthly records from 215 rain stations for the 1968–2014 period. A k-means clustering analysis was used to divide the study area into k regions based on monthly and annual precipitation variables and geograph...

This study presents a methodology for the regional parameters estimation of the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model, with the objective of estimating daily flow series in the Pacific drainage under the context of limited hydrological data availability. This methodology has been designed to obtain the model parameters from a limited number o...

Anomalous conditions in the oceans and atmosphere have the potential to be used to enhance the predictability of flood events, enabling earlier warnings to reduce risk. In the Amazon basin, extreme flooding is consistently attributed to warmer or cooler conditions in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans, with some evidence linking floods to oth...

This section of the State of Climate in 2019 report provides summaries of the 2019 temperature and precipitation conditions across central South America. This region includes Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Summaries of notable weather events and their impacts are also included, together with a sidebar on “Fires in southern Amazonia in the dry...

In the southern Peruvian Andes, communities are highly dependent on climatic conditions due to the mainly rain‐fed agriculture and the importance of glaciers and snow melt as a freshwater resource. Longer‐term trends and year‐to‐year variability of precipitation or temperature severely affect living conditions. This study evaluates seasonal precipi...

Precipitation extremes have been investigated throughout the last decades in different regions of the Andes. However, little attention has been paid to the Altiplano region (Central Andes), especially to the Peruvian Altiplano (PA) that represents a complex area and is highly vulnerable to extreme events, such as floods and droughts, driven by the...

The Andes is the most biodiverse region across the globe. In addition, some of the largest urban areas in South America are located within this region. Therefore, ecosystems and human population are affected by hydroclimate changes reported at global, regional and local scales. This paper summarizes progress of knowledge about long-term trends obse...

En el presente estudio se aplica el análisis regional de frecuencias (ARF) para precipitaciones máximas (anual en 24 horas) de estaciones pluviométricas administradas por el SENAMHI a nivel nacional. Para tal fin se utilizó el enfoque de L-momentos (LM) y aplicación de análisis clúster mediante las técnicas de SKATER para una primera regionalizació...

The great success of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and its successor Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) has accelerated the development of global high-resolution satellite-based precipitation products (SPP). However, the quantitative accuracy of SPPs has to be evaluated before using these datasets in water resource applications...

Evapotranspiration (ETo) is one of the most important variables of the water cycle when water requirements for irrigation, water resource planning or hydrological applications are analyzed. In this context, models based on artificial neural networks (ANN) of the retro-propagation type can be an alternative method to estimate ETo in highland regions...

La agresividad de la lluvia contribuye a la erosividad del suelo en regiones de alta montaña, y por tal a la sedimentación en la parte baja de la cuenca. La reducción de incertidumbre acerca de la agresividad de la lluvia en regiones costeras y andinas contribuye a la formulación de medidas de mitigación que contribuyan a la reducción de erosión y...

A new gridded rainfall dataset available for Peru is introduced, called PISCOp V2.1 (Peruvian Interpolated data of SENAMHI’s Climatological and Hydrological Observations). PISCOp has been developed for the period 1981 to the present, with an average latency of eight weeks at 0.1° spatial resolution. The merging algorithm is based on geostatistical...

Because increasing climatic variability and anthropic pressures have affected the sediment dynamics of large tropical rivers, long-term sediment concentration series have become crucial for understanding the related socioeconomic and environmental impacts. For operational and cost rationalization purposes, index concentrations are often sampled in...

Because increasing climatic variability and anthropic pressures have affected the sediment dynamics of large tropical rivers, long-term sediment concentration series have become crucial for understanding the related socio-economic and environmental impacts. For operational and cost rationalization purposes, index concentrations are often sampled in...

Los datos obtenidos mediante satélites acerca de la precipitación pueden ser útiles en regiones donde ésta es muy heterogénea, como, por ejemplo, en los Andes, pues por lo general son escasamente monitoreadas. El objetivo de este estudio es precisar las características de las principales variables hidrológicas, y comprender el potencial de datos de...

Core Ideas OZCAR is a network of sites studying the critical zone. OZCAR covers various disciplines. OZCAR will help disciplines to work together for a better representation and modeling of the critical zone. The French critical zone initiative, called OZCAR (Observatoires de la Zone Critique–Application et Recherche or Critical Zone Observatories...

In a context of water scarcity in Peruvian Pacific catchments as a crucial issue for Peru, added to the paucity of data availability, we propose a methodology which provides new perspectives for freshwater availability estimation as a base reference for unimpaired conditions. Under those considerations, a regional discharge of 709 m³/s to the Pacif...

Peruvian Pacific drainage catchments only benefit from 2% of the total national available freshwater while they concentrate almost 50% of the population of the country. This situation is likely to lead a severe water scarcity and also constitutes an obstacle to economic development. Catchments runoff fluctuations in response to climate variability...

La vertiente del Pacífico peruano solo se beneficia del 2% del total del agua superficial disponible a nivel nacional, mientras concentra casi el 50% de la población del país. Las fluctuaciones de caudales en las numerosas cuencas de esta región en respuesta a la variabilidad climática y/o las actividades humanas se pueden reflejar en eventos extre...

In 2017, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth's atmosphere-carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide-reached new record highs. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth's surface for 2017 was 405.0 ± 0.1 ppm, 2.2 ppm greater than for 2016 and the highest in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice cor...

Estudiar la oferta hídrica de la cuenca del río Jubones (CRJ), es importante para ajustar adaptaciones frente a los cambios actuales y futuros del clima, para esto es necesario comprender los cambios históricos espacio‐temporal en el patrón de las lluvias. Para esto, se utilizaron 13 estaciones pluviométricas, y analizaron las tendencias de la prec...

Hydrological changes were assessed considering possible changes in precipitation and regulation or hydraulic diversion projects developed in the basin since 1960s in terms of improving water supply of the Rimac River, which is the main source of fresh water of Peru’s capital. To achieve this objective, a trend analysis of precipitation and flow ser...

The aim of this research was to evaluate the gridded precipitation products of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), in hydrological modeling in the Huancané river basin of the Peruvian Altiplano. When comparing the average daily rainfall of the 3B42RT, 3B42V7 and IMERG products with respect...

In Ecuador and Peru, geochemical information from Pacific coastal rivers is limited and scarce. Here, we present an unedited database of major element concentrations from five HYBAM observatory stations monitored monthly between 4 and 10 years, and the discrete sampling of 23 Andean rivers distributed along the climate gradient of the Ecuadorian an...

Systematic data quality issues may occur at various stages of the data generation process. They may affect large fractions of observational datasets and remain largely undetected with standard data quality control. This study investigates the effects of such undetected data quality issues on the results of climatological analyses. For this purpose,...

The climatology of precipitation, maximum and minimun temperatures is presented, as well as the climatology of extreme events for the central Altiplano (Peru and Bolivia region around Titicaca Lake). The atlas is based on measurements from some 50 manned stations for the 1981-2010 period. Data was extensively verified by applying the methodologies...

Study region: The Chancay-Huaral (CH) coastal river basin in the Lima Region, Peru, between the Pacific Ocean and the Andean Cordillera. Study focus: Climate change impacts on annual and monthly discharges in the CH Basin are assessed for the future period 2051–2080. Hydrological modeling is sensitive to biases in input variables. Therefore, bias-c...

An initial ground validation of the Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) Day-1 product from March 2014 to August 2015 is presented for the tropical Andes. IMERG was evaluated along with the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) against 302 quality-controlled rain gauges across Ecuado...

The present study investigates the application of the index flood L-moments-based regional frequency analysis procedure (RFA-LM) to the annual maximum 24-h rainfall (AM) of 33 rainfall gauge stations (RGs) to estimate rainfall quantiles at the Titicaca Lake drainage (TL). The study region was chosen because it is characterised by common floods that...

In the last two decades, rainfall estimates provided by the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) have proven applicable in hydrological studies. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, which provides the new generation of rainfall estimates, is now considered a global successor to TRMM. The usefulness of GPM data in hydrological...

El Niño in the eastern and central Pacific has different impacts on the rainfall of South America, and the atmospheric pathways through the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) and Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) are poorly understood. To address this, we performed linear regression analysis of E (eastern Pacific) and C (central Pacific) in...