Abstract
Climate proxy data are required for improved understanding of climate variability and change in the pre-instrumental period. We present the first international initiative to compile and share information on pro pluvia rogation ceremonies, which is a well-studied proxy of agricultural drought. Currently, the database has more than 3500 dates of celebration of rogation ceremonies, providing information for 153 locations across 11 countries spanning the period from 1333 to 1949. This product provides data for better understanding of the pre-instrumental drought variability, validating natural proxies and model simulations, and multi-proxy rainfall reconstructions, amongst other climatic exercises. The database is freely available and can be easily accessed and visualized via http://inpro.unizar.es/.
Highlights
Background & SummaryDrought is one of the most important natural hazards, with adverse impacts on both natural and human environments[1]
These impacts span a wide variety of socioeconomic sectors, including agriculture[2,3], energy[4], and tourism[5], among others
PPRs have been used in the last decades to understand drought variability in the pre-instrumental period across different countries (e.g. Spain[17,18,19,20,21], France[22,23], Ecuador[24], Mexico[25,26,27], Italy[28] and Portugal29): to generate precipitation[30] or atmospheric circulation modes reconstructions (e.g. North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)[31], El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)32); to validate natural proxies[33,34], or to understand the social and ecological impacts of droughts[35]
Summary
Drought is one of the most important natural hazards, with adverse impacts on both natural and human environments[1]. PPRs have been used in the last decades to understand drought variability in the pre-instrumental period across different countries (e.g. Spain[17,18,19,20,21], France[22,23], Ecuador[24], Mexico[25,26,27], Italy[28] and Portugal29): to generate precipitation[30] or atmospheric circulation modes reconstructions (e.g. North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)[31], El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)32); to validate natural proxies[33,34], or to understand the social and ecological impacts of droughts[35] All these works concur that PPRs are an accurate drought proxy, with extraordinary date precision. Due to the demonstrated utility of this proxy, as well as the significant effort made by many researchers to rescue rogation ceremonies, a specific international repository for this proxy may be of particular importance for the research community This repository can assure data quality and the reuse of this invaluable climatic information for different applications. This initiative is open to any contributions of new research and we encourage any researcher to share their PPRs through the IMPRO initiative
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