The Variable Drought In The 1920's

The Amazon River is one of the largest rivers in the world and is essential to animal, plant, and human life in and around the river. For this reason, it is very important to watch the river closely and observe how it acts so we can interact with it in harmony. Since 1903 scientists have been recording annual maximum and minimum water depth above the local average. Observations were fairly until 1926 when the “Drought of the Century” occurred. There was a 50% drop in discharge from the river basin and the river was, on average, 6 meters lower. In order to gather enough data to learn about the 1926 drought monthly rainfall archives had to be identified from the 1920’s. A lot of the information was gathered from the Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia where most of Brazil’s meteorological observations are stored. …show more content…
In order to have a more comprehensive study researchers had to use data from other South American Countries like Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia. After gathering the rainfall records, researchers conducting this study decided to work rainfall anomalies on an annual time scale due to lack of available rainfall data for key locations during the 1920’s. In addition to quantitative government data, a fiction adventure novel (Caroni Gold) gave researcher Robert Meade insight into Amazonian droughts. Quotes from the book shine light on the cyclic history of the 1912 and 1926 droughts. The original data gathered for the droughts was collected at Manaus, where the Solimoes and Rio Negro conjoin to form the massive Amazon River. Essentially, the waters reaching Manaus consist of water from the whole basin because the two rivers that conjoin at Manaus are made up of hundreds of smaller rivers that flow into each other from all around the