Apologies, the formatting seems to have gone wrong.
so i have the following vertical columns (time, Amazon, Congo...) with some missing values:
time 195101 195102 195103 ....... 200610 200611 200612
Amazon 4950 5490 7050 ... 5490 12900 9548
Congo 3095 6904 6094 ... NaN NaN NaN
.....
and two vertical columns specifying start and end years/months
start 195101 195601 197201 ....
end 200612 199112 199912 ....