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

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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.

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del Rosario Prieto, A.M., García-Herrera, B.R. & Martin, E.H. Early Records of Icebergs in the South Atlantic Ocean from Spanish Documentary Sources. Climatic Change 66, 29–48 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000043142.94461.d1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000043142.94461.d1

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