Abstract
Interannual climate variability accounts for most of the observed crop yield fluctuations in the main agricultural region of Argentina. Moreover, in this region climatic variations are related to sea surface temperatures (SST) and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). In the present study, we aimed to obtain indicators of crop yield variability based on these drivers. For this purpose, monthly anomalies corresponding to SSTs from the Equatorial Pacific (SSTN3) and South Atlantic (SSTSA) Oceans and the SOI were related to maize, sunflower and soybean grain yield anomalies. Historical data (1923–2000 for maize, 1934–2000 for sunflower and 1969–2000 for soybean) were used to obtain grain yield anomalies at the county level after removing technology trends by smoothing techniques. By means of correlation analysis, we obtained the counties presenting significant association ( p