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Volume 20, Number 3—March 2014
Historical Review

Drought and Epidemic Typhus, Central Mexico, 1655–1918

Jordan N. BurnsComments to Author , Rodolfo Acuna-Soto, and David W. Stahle
Author affiliations: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA (J.N. Burns, D.W. Stahle); Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico (R. Acuna-Soto)

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Figure 1

A) Time series of summer Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) averaged for 78 grid points in central Mexico, 1665–1918. Data were obtained from Cook et al. (12,13) and Therrell et al. (14). B) Time series of June–July PDSI reconstructed from the Cuahtemoc la Fragua tree-ring chronology in east-central Mexico by using an average of 22 grid locations from the monthly PDSI dataset of R.R. Heim, Jr. (National Climatic Data Center, Ashville, NC, USA). Circles indicate typhus epidemics. Red lines indi

Figure 1. . . . A) Time series of summer Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) averaged for 78 grid points in central Mexico, 1665–1918. Data were obtained from Cook et al. (12,13) and Therrell et al. (14). B) Time series of June–July PDSI reconstructed from the Cuahtemoc la Fragua tree-ring chronology in east-central Mexico by using an average of 22 grid locations from the monthly PDSI dataset of R.R. Heim, Jr. (National Climatic Data Center, Ashville, NC, USA). Circles indicate typhus epidemics. Red lines indicate high-frequency yearly variability of moisture reconstruction. Black lines indicate smoothed lower-frequency representation of this variability. Horizontal lines indicate average PDSI for period.

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