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Abstract Instrumental observations indicate that Amazon precipitation and streamflow extremes have increased during the last 40 years, possibly due to anthropogenic changes and natural variability. How unprecedented these changes might be is difficult to determine because some paleoclimatic, instrumental, and climate model simulations suggest that Amazonian precipitation and streamflow may be subject to multidecadal variability with return intervals longer than most direct observations. A new 258‐yearlong tree‐ring chronology ofCedrela odoratahas been developed in the eastern Amazon and has been used to reconstruct wet season precipitation totals from 1759–2016. Reconstructed drought extremes are associated with significant sea surface temperature anomalies over the tropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Strong multidecadal variance is identified in the reconstruction that may reflect a component of natural rainfall variability relevant to forest ecosystem dynamics and suggesting that recent hydroclimate changes over the eastern Amazon may not be unprecedented over the past 258 years.
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Drought and Flood Extremes on the Amazon River and in Northeast Brazil, 1790–1900
Abstract Recent severe droughts, extreme floods, and increasing differences between seasonal high and low flows on the Amazon River may represent a twenty-first-century increase in the amplitude of the hydrologic cycle over the Amazon Basin. These precipitation and streamflow changes may have arisen from natural ocean–atmospheric variability, deforestation within the drainage basin of the Amazon River, or anthropogenic climate change. Tree-ring reconstructions of wet-season precipitation extremes, substantiated with historical accounts of climate and river levels on the Amazon River and in northeast Brazil found in the Brazilian Digital Library, indicate that the recent river-level extremes on the Amazon may have been equaled or possibly exceeded during the preinstrumental nineteenth century. The “Forgotten Drought” of 1865 was the lowest wet-season rainfall total reconstructed with tree-rings in the eastern Amazon from 1790 to 2016 and appears to have been one of the lowest stream levels observed on the Amazon River during the historical era according to first-hand descriptions by Louis Agassiz, his Brazilian colleague João Martins da Silva Coutinho, and others. Heavy rains and flooding are described during most of the tree-ring-reconstructed wet extremes, including the complete inundation of “First Street” in Santarem, Brazil, in 1859 and the overtopping of the Bittencourt Bridge in Manaus, Brazil, in 1892. These extremes in the tree-ring estimates and historical observations indicate that recent high and low flow anomalies on the Amazon River may not have exceeded the natural variability of precipitation and streamflow during the nineteenth century. Significance StatementProxy tree-ring and historical evidence for precipitation extremes during the preinstrumental nineteenth century indicate that recent floods and droughts on the Amazon River may have not yet exceeded the range of natural hydroclimatic variability.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2002374
- PAR ID:
- 10464248
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Meteorological Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Climate
- Volume:
- 36
- Issue:
- 20
- ISSN:
- 0894-8755
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 7213-7229
- Size(s):
- p. 7213-7229
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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