Early Records of Icebergs in the South Atlantic Ocean from Spanish Documentary Sources

Abstract

The use of documentary sources has proven useful to identify extremeclimatic events and their variability during the pre-instrumental period. Theaim of this paper is to describe iceberg sightings in the Western SouthAtlantic during the second half of the 18th century, as recorded from Spanishlogbooks. A total of five sightings have been found, two corresponding toisolated bergs and three to outbreaks. The relevance of these results istwofold: they are the first documented iceberg sightings to date and, aboveall, they correspond to very unusual episodes, characterized by a high numberof high-sized bergs and by the relatively low latitude of their location. Itis suggested that they could be associated to cold episodes in Antarctica.