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The 1877–1878 El Niño episode: associated impacts in South America

Climatic Change volume 92, pages 389–416 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

At times when attention on climate issues is strongly focused on the assessment of potential impacts of future climate change due to the intensification of the planetary greenhouse effect, it is perhaps pertinent to look back and explore the consequences of past climate variability. In this article we examine a large disruption in global climate that occurred during 1877–1878, when human influence was negligible. The mechanisms explaining this global disturbance are not well established, but there is considerable evidence that the major El Niño episode that started by the end of 1876 and peaked during the 1877–1878 boreal winter contributed significantly to it. The associated regional climate anomalies were extremely destructive, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, where starvation due to intense droughts in Asia, South-East Asia and Africa took the lives of more than 20 million people. In South America regional precipitation anomalies were typical of El Niño events, with rainfall deficit and droughts in the northern portion of the continent as well as in northeast Brazil and the highlands of the central Andes (Altiplano). In contrast, anomalously intense rainfall and flooding episodes were reported for the coastal areas of southern Ecuador and Northern Perú, as well as along the extratropical West coast of the continent (central Chile, 30° S–40° S), and in the Paraná basin in the southeast region. By far the most devastating impacts in terms of suffering and loss of life occurred in the semiarid region of northeast Brazil where several hundreds of thousands of people died from starvation and diseases during the drought that started in 1877.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geophysics, Universidad de Chile, Blanco Encalada 2002, Santiago, 837-0449, Chile

    Patricio Aceituno & Mark Falvey

  2. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales, Mendoza, Argentina

    Maríadel del Rosario Prieto

  3. Instituto de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile

    María Eugenia Solari

  4. Instituto Geofísico del Perú, Lima, Peru

    Alejandra Martínez

  5. Escuela de Geociencias y Medio Ambiente, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín, Colombia

    Germán Poveda

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  1. Patricio Aceituno
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  2. Maríadel del Rosario Prieto
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  3. María Eugenia Solari
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  4. Alejandra Martínez
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  5. Germán Poveda
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  6. Mark Falvey
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Correspondence to Patricio Aceituno.

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Aceituno, P., Prieto, M.d., Solari, M.E. et al. The 1877–1878 El Niño episode: associated impacts in South America. Climatic Change 92, 389–416 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-008-9470-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-008-9470-5

Keywords

  • Southern Oscillation
  • Ecuador
  • Rainfall Anomaly
  • Southern Oscillation Index
  • Mercurio