Caracterización de la Pequeña Edad de Hielo en el México central a través de fuentes documentales

Abstract

Comparing instrumental climatic sources with proxy data, in order to review existing climatic models and to acknowledge climatic variability in time and space, is widely recognized nowadays. In Mexico the study of past climate along the last 500 hundred years, has mostly been conducted through the analysis of instrumental sources. Studies that have 1877 as time limit, when the first continuous records started to be taken in Mexico City. For the study of climate along the last centuries, documentary sources have proved their accuracy, if compared to physical and biological data, usually modified by human activity. Tree ring information is among biological sources also useful for recent centuries, but in Mexico it is still necessary to have a better regional coverage. The Little Ice Age ( LIA) was defined back in the 1930s through information gathered in North America and Western Europe, but much is still unknown about the climatic behavior of lower latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern one during LIA. The reconstruction of past climates, through docu- mentary sources started under scientific principles, only until the mid 20 th century and it was a task conducted mostly by British and French authors. Emmanuel Le