Reconstruction of some droughts through growth rings for northern Mexico

Abstract

The historical impact of droughts on the social and economic stability of settlements in northern Mexico demands a better understanding of high-end low-frequency climate variability, which impacts water availability and produces grain scarcity for human consumption. Dendroclimatic reconstructions can define historical extreme drought frequencies, intensity, duration, and trends. Douglas-fir ring width chronologies were involved in this study to reconstruct seasonal precipitation variability in three northern Mexico states. The developed tree-ring series extended 75 to 99 years long all of them with high interseries correlation (0.56 to 0.72). Winter-Spring rainfall reconstruction showed high short-and long-term variability. Severe droughts were detected for the periods 1919 to 1924, 1948 to 1963, 1969 to 1979, 1988 to 2001, and 2008 to 2014. Seasonal winter-spring precipitation was significantly influenced by warm ENSO events with correlations ranging from 0.40 to 0.41. The effect of this circulatory pattern impacted an extended area in northern Mexico given the distance between studies’ sites greater than 500 km straight line. This study demonstrated the influence of the ENSO tele-connections in northern Mexico.