Identification

Title

A Chronology of El Niño events from primary documentary sources in northern Peru

Abstract

The authors present a chronology of El Niño (EN) events based on documentary records from northern Peru. The chronology, which covers the period 1550–1900, is constructed mainly from primary sources from the city of Trujillo (Peru), the Archivo General de Indias in Seville (Spain), and the Archivo General de la Nación in Lima (Peru), supplemented by a reassessment of documentary evidence included in previously published literature. The archive in Trujillo has never been systematically evaluated for information related to the occurrence of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Abundant rainfall and river discharge correlate well with EN events in the area around Trujillo, which is very dry during most other years. Thus, rain and flooding descriptors, together with reports of failure of the local fishery, are the main indicators of EN occurrence that the authors have searched for in the documents. A total of 59 EN years are identified in this work. This chronology is compared with the two main previous documentary EN chronologies and with ENSO indicators derived from proxy data other than documentary sources. Overall, the seventeenth century appears to be the least active EN period, while the 1620s, 1720s, 1810s, and 1870s are the most active decades. The results herein reveal long-term fluctuations in warm ENSO activity that compare reasonably well with low-frequency variability deduced from other proxy data.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d737790v

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-05-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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Use constraints

Copyright 2008 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact