The Use of Spanish Historical Archives to Reconstruct Climate Variability

Abstract

Spanish historical archives contain a vast store of information about Spain and its former colonies in America and Asia. Some searches for climate-related information within these archives have been undertaken recently, but they have been by no means exhaustive. This paper discusses the principal archives and shows, by means of several examples, that they exhibit a high potential for inferring past climate over a wide range of timescales and geographical areas. Extraction of such information is often time consuming, and requires a combination of archival, historical, and climatological expertise, and the development of individualized methodologies to fit each situation and type of data. In spite of these difficulties, the archives can be particularly useful in many cases where there are no alternative sources of climate data. Thus, the complexities of the multidisciplinary effort required should not discourage other researchers from undertaking similar studies.