Analysis of the climatic evolution of the north half of Spain since the 15th century from dendroclimatic series.

摘要

The main objective of the present research is to study the climatic evolution of the north half of Spain from the 15th and 16th centuries, the period when the Little Ice Age (LIA) starts, until the present time. This study shows the evolution of the two most outstanding climatic variables: temperature and precipitation. The sources used were a set of 42 Spanish dendrochronologies, constructed from more than 1,500 samples of different trees, and the instrumental data of various weather stations of the National Institute of Meteorology of Spain. This information has allowed us to reconstruct the seasonal and annual temperatures and precipitation of nine weather stations of the study area since the 15th century. The analysis of these climatic reconstructions has shown a common pattern of climatic evolution valid for the whole studied area and some important spatial differences in some periods. It is appropriate to underline some cold phases in the 16th and 17th centuries, in the period when the LIA starts (16th century) and in Maunder Minimum period (1675--1715), as well as in the central decades of the 19th century. The results obtained in our studied area have been compared to other regional studies. The cold phases coincide with similar periods described in Western and Central Europe, although the most important cooling related with LIA period in Spain is in 16th century, not in Maunder Minimum (17th century) as it is common in the rest of Europe. As for rainfall, the most important dry anomalies appear in the 16th and 17th centuries, a period with high interannual variability of precipitation.