Drought and Flood Extremes on the Amazon River and in Northeast Brazil, 1790-1900

Recent severe droughts, extreme floods, and increasing differences between seasonal high and low flows on the Amazon River may represent a twenty-first-century increase in the amplitude of the hydrologic cycle over the Amazon Basin. These precipitation and streamflow changes may have arisen from natural ocean-atmospheric variability, deforestation within the drainage basin of the Amazon River, or anthropogenic climate change. Tree-ring reconstructions of wet-season precipitation extremes, substantiated with historical accounts of climate and river levels on the Amazon River and in northeast Brazil found in the Brazilian Digital Library, indicate that the recent river-level extremes on the Amazon may have been equaled or possibly exceeded during the preinstrumental nineteenth century. The Forgotten Drought of 1865 was the lowest wet-season rainfall total reconstructed with tree-rings in the eastern Amazon from 1790 to 2016 and appears to have been one of the lowest stream levels observed on the Amazon River during the historical era according to first -hand descriptions by Louis Agassiz, his Brazilian colleague Joa similar to o Martins da Silva Coutinho, and others. Heavy rains and flooding are described during most of the tree-ring-reconstructed wet extremes, including the complete inundation of First Street in Santarem, Brazil, in 1859 and the overtopping of the Bittencourt Bridge in Manaus, Brazil, in 1892. These extremes in the tree-ring estimates and historical observations indicate that recent high and low flow anomalies on the Amazon River may not have exceeded the natural variability of precipitation and streamflow during the nineteenth century.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Proxy tree-ring and historical evidence for precipitation extremes during the prein-strumental nineteenth century indicate that recent floods and droughts on the Amazon River may have not yet exceeded the range of natural hydroclimatic variability.

Automated summary

Recent extreme climate events in the Amazon Basin, such as severe droughts and floods, may be a result of increased amplitude of the hydrologic cycle. These changes in precipitation and streamflow could be attributed to natural variability, deforestation, or anthropogenic climate change. Tree-ring reconstructions and historical records indicate that the recent river-level extremes may have been similar to or even exceeded those observed during the nineteenth century.