6533b85afe1ef96bd12b9f33

RESEARCH PRODUCT

How do the 1982/83 and 1997/98 El Niños rank in a geological record from Peru?

subject

description

Two very strong El Nino events during the years 1982/83 and 1997/98 caused dramatic economical and social damages worldwide. However, it is quite uncertain how these events rank in a long-term perspective and how frequent events of similar magnitude were in the past. Very-high-resolution proxy data for flood events in the El Nino key region of Peru are presented. Strong flood events in the hyper-arid northern and northern central Peru coastal desert occur during El Nino events. The flood data are derived from a laminated marine sediment core. The proxy data reveal that both modern events were recorded as the strongest sediment discharges in the 106KL flood record over the last millennium. Similar or much stronger events occurred much more frequently, especially during the second and fourth millennium before the present. The strongest flood events since the last Glacial occurred during the early Holocene. Though the flood activity estimated from core 106KL is certainly not a perfect recorder of individual El Nino year flood intensity the sediment discharge to site 106KL is far from classifying the 1982/83 and 1997/98 El Nino floods as very strong floods in a Holocene or late Holocene perspective.