El Niño occurrences over the past four and a half centuries

Abstract

Applicable publications, involving five languages, have been reviewed to obtain information on El Niños that occurred over the past four and a half centuries. Since this information refers strictly to El Niño occurrences, a regional manifestation of the large‐scale (El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO)) event, it is based primarily on evidence obtained from the west coast region of northern South America and its adjacent Pacific Ocean waters. Authored lists of events were not acceptable without referenced valid information sources. It was desirable to have cross‐correlated reports from independent sources. Relative strengths of events are based on such considerations as wind and current effects on travel times of ancient sailing ships, degree of physical damage and destruction, amounts of rainfall and flooding, mass mortality of endemic marine organisms and guano birds, extent of invasion by tropical nekton, rises in sea temperatures and sea levels, affects on coastal fisheries and fish meal production, etc. Emphasis is placed on strong and very strong events. For example, the 1940–1941, 1957–1958, and 1972–1973 events fall into the strong category, whereas the 1891, 1925–1926 and 1982–1983 events are considered very strong. Over our period of study, 47 El Niño events were placed in the strong or very strong categories. Over the period 1800‐present, we noted 32 El Niño events of moderate or near moderate intensity. Weak events are not included here. The approach used here caused us to revise many of our earlier evaluations concerning event occurrences and intensities. Our tropical Pacific thickness analyses and cumulative plots of Southern Oscillation index anomalies over the southeast Pacific trade wind zone showed additional evidence as to the unusual strength of the 1982–1983 event. Also, in our investigation we noted several periods of long‐term (near decadal or longer) climatic change.

ENSO and cholera: A nonstationary link related to climate change?

“…Boxes refer to strong-very strong El Niñ o (dark boxes), strong-very strong La Niñ a (light-gray boxes), and moderate ENSO episodes (white boxes). Episodes were classified according to standardized terminology, both for the historical ENSO period (39) and for the recent interval (40). The analysis identifies isolated episodes of covariation and quantifies the corresponding local contribution to the overall variance.…”

An El Niño That “Failed to Appear”, an El Niño That Was “Hiding” and a Prediction of the Next El Niño

“…Their list included all previously reported El Niño episodes plus new episodes. This list included those from the classic paper bY Quinn, Neal and Mayolo [5]. The Quinn et al list was compiled from various historical reports of major climate anomalies in wind, ocean currents, physical changes, rain fall, flooding etc.…”

Reconstructing El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) from high‐resolution palaeoarchives

“…These records provide a year-by-year chronology of unusual meteorological and hydrological phenomena characteristic of discrete ENSO episodes such as extreme flooding or drought conditions (Quinn et al, 1987;Whetton and Rutherfurd, 1994).…”

“…To determine the intensity of events, years are classified from very strong to weak based on the apparent extent of destruction and societal cost detailed in these historical documents or through simple statistical definitions (Quinn et al, 1987;Quinn and Neal, 1992;Whetton and Rutherfurd, 1994;Gergis, 2006). Importantly, these records can provide an independent means of verifying model simulations and continuous proxy reconstructions of ENSO indices (Stahle et al, 1998;Rodbell et al, 1999;Mann et al, 2000a;Gergis, 2006), and are of use to archaeologists and social scientists interested in human responses to climatic events (Bouma et al, 1997;Grove and Chappell, 2000;Kuhnel and Coates, 2000;Kovats et al, 2003;Goddard and Dilley, 2005;Patz et al, 2005).…”