ENSO Reconstruction Based on Documentary Data From Ecuador, Peru and Chile

tually was. Moreover, though many of the documents represent the reporting of events and experiences as they took place, they also reflect the positionality, and purpose of the author and the intended audience. Subjectivity and bias will also influence the validity of the information conveyed and used for constructing climatic chronologies. It is difficult to establish from documentary sources, for instance, what constituted normal climatic conditions. There may also be some cases (for example during political upheavals) when unusual climate goes unreported in either the documentary or instrumental record. Whether a climate event is recorded is also dependent on the size of the potentially affected population and its level of economic development. Climatically-induced agricultural failure, for instance, is only likely to be recorded if a significant number of people are affected by harvest losses. It is also likely that the frequency of singular events might be relatively under recorded in comparison with recognised severe climatic phases, where bad conditions persist over several years. Such interpretative problems can compromise the value of archival records of climate change. The collections of historical documents available for Latin America as a whole are extremely rich and diverse. Used carefully, these archives can provide us with an invaluable and as yet still under-exploited medium for the reconstruction of detailed regional climate histories. REFERENCES Butzer, K.W. and Butzer, E.K., 1997: The ‘natural’ vegetation of the Mexican Bajio: archival documentation of a 16th-century savanna environment. Quaternary International 43/44, 161-172. Endfield, G.H. and O’Hara, S.L., 1997: Conflicts over water in ‘The Little Drought Age’ in Central Mexico. Environment and History 3, 255-272. Florescano, E. and Swan. S., 1995: Breve historia de la sequía en México. Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa. O’Hara, S.L. and Metcalfe, S.E., 1995: Reconstructing the climate of Mexico from historical records. The Holocene 5, 485-490. Prieto, M., R. Herrera and Dussel, P., 2000: Archival evidence for some aspects of historical climate variability in Argentina and Bolivia during the 17th and 18th centuries. In: Southern Hemisphere Paleoand Neoclimates. W. Volkheimer and P. Smolka (eds). Springer –Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg, 381 p. Quinn, W.H., V.T. Neal and Antúnez de Mayolo., S., 1987: El Niño occurrences over the past four and a half centuries