South American Drought Atlas

Composite Map of Santa Fe City Floods (1651 and 1723)
* Denotes Location of the Floods
December-February PDSI

Welcome to the South American Drought Atlas.  This web application provides access to summer (December-February) reconstructions of the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) on a 0.5° latitude/longitude grid over South America south of 12°S from AD 1400-2000.  The reconstructions are derived from 286 tree-ring chronologies.  For further details on the reconstructions, see Morales et al. (2020, link below).

Maps and time series can be created using tools under the "Maps" and "Time Series" menus, respectively.  For details on how to create maps and time series, see the "Help" menu.  An animation that runs through each year of the reconstruction from AD 1400-2000 is available via the link below.

Questions, comments, or suggestions may be sent to Dorian J. Burnette.

Citations

  • Dataset:  Morales, M.S., E.R. Cook, J. Barichivich, D.A. Christie, R. Villalba, C. LeQuesne, A.M. Srur, M. Eugenia Ferrero, A. Gonzalez-Reyes, F. Couvreux, V. Matskovsky, J.C. Aravena, A. Lara, I.A. Mundo, F. Rojas, M.R. Prieto, J.E. Smerdon, L.O. Bianchi, M.H. Masiokas, R. Urrutia-Jalabert, M. Rodriguez-Caton, A.A. Munoz, M. Rojas-Badilla, C. Alvarez, L. Lopez, B.H. Luckman, D. Lister, I. Harris, P.D. Jones, A.P. Williams, G. Velazquez, D. Aliste, I. Aguilera-Betti, E. Marcotti, F. Flores, T. Munoz, E. Cuq, and J.A. Boninsegna, 2020:  Six hundred years of South American tree rings reveal an increase in severe hydroclimatic events since mid-20th century.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117, 16816-16823. [Download pdf]
  • Web App:  Burnette, D.J., 2021:  The Tree-Ring Drought Atlas Portal: gridded drought reconstructions for the past 500-2000 years.  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 102, 953-956. [Download pdf]

The entire dataset can be downloaded from NOAA Paleoclimatology.  These data are also available at the Center for Climate and Resilience Research.


Scheduled Downtime:  This server may be down for maintenance on Saturday following the 2nd Tuesday of the month and any Sunday from 12-8 a.m. Central Time (0600-1400 UTC or 0500-1300 UTC when the U.S. is on standard and daylight savings time, respectively).