Heavy Rainfall and Landslide Event in January 1831 at the Pedregoso Mountains (Cabeza Del Buey, SW Spain)

In this work, a landslide event that took place on January 1831 at the Pedregoso Mountains, Cabeza del Buey, SW Spain, is described. This landslide had not been documented to date and was only described in the local press. This event involved an estimated amount of dislodged material in the order of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Atmosphere
Main Authors: Juan Pedro García-Garrido, María Cruz Gallego, Teodoro Palacios, Ricardo M. Trigo, José Manuel Vaquero
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020
Subjects:
NAO
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11050544
https://doaj.org/article/c1cf495324e6443e803d15d41b2d7588
Description
Summary:In this work, a landslide event that took place on January 1831 at the Pedregoso Mountains, Cabeza del Buey, SW Spain, is described. This landslide had not been documented to date and was only described in the local press. This event involved an estimated amount of dislodged material in the order of 10 4 m 3 . The amount of meteorological data is very scarce as the event occurred before the setting up of the national meteorological service in Spain. However, data from the relatively near location of SW Iberia suggest that the landslide was preceded by a prolonged period of unusually high precipitation totals and that this intense wet period is compatible with the large-scale atmospheric configuration in the winter of 1829–1830. In fact, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index for that winter achieved one of the most negative values observed in the bicentennial period spanning 1821 to 2019. This multidisciplinary work represents the first attempt to report and describe the main triggering mechanism for an historical landslide in the Extremadura region that is similar to other great historical landslides which have already been documented for other locations in Spain.