| Details1: | Abstract
River streamflows are excellent climatic indicators since they integrate precipitation
over large areas. Here we follow up on our previous study of the influence of
solar activity on the flow of the Paran´a River, in South America. We find that the
unusual minimum of solar activity in recent years have a correlation on very low
levels in the Paran´a’s flow, and we report historical evidence of low water levels
during the Little Ice Age. We also study data for the streamflow of three other
rivers (Colorado, San Juan and Atuel), and snow levels in the Andes. We obtained
that, after eliminating the secular trends and smoothing out the solar cycle, there
is a strong positive correlation between the residuals of both the Sunspot Number
and the streamflows, as we obtained for the Paran´a. Both results put together imply
that higher solar activity corresponds to larger precipitation, both in summer and
in wintertime, not only in the large basin of the Paran´a, but also in the Andean
region north of the limit with Patagonia.
Key words: South American rivers, solar activity, streamflow.
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