How unusual was late 20th century El Ni o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)? Assessing evidence from tree-ring, coral, ice-core and documentary palaeoarchives, A.D. 1525-2002

This study shows a brief overview of the development of meteorology in Ecuador from historical documentation of climatic events in the Colonial era through to modern data collection. In the colonial era (16th century-1824), historical documents of rogation ceremonies and municipal proceedings, from the Quito area, provide a rich source of climate information, including El Ni o events. Our preliminary findings show that very few of the historically documented catastrophes and other marked environmental events in Quito match known El Ni o episodes. Independently, the first meteorological data was collected in Ecuador (beginning with La Condamine in 1738), followed by the earliest attempts to build a national meteorological network in the 1860's, linked closely to President Gabriel García Moreno and the Jesuits. The 1925 El Ni o phenomenon was the first important meteorological episode recorded with scientific instrumentation in Ecuador, with newspapers providing complementary archives about the extreme impact of this event.