1,050 years of Hurricane Strikes on Long Island in The Bahamas

Wallace, E. J.; Donnelly, Jeffrey P.; Hengstum, Peter J. van; Winkler, Tyler S.; McKeon, Kelly; MacDonald, Daniel G.; d'Entremont, Nicole; Sullivan, Richard M.; Woodruff, Jonathan D.; Hawkes, Andrea D.; Maio, Christopher V.

doi:10.1029/2020pa004156

Cited by 15 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…In order to reconstruct regional or basin-scale activity, paleohurricane records must be compiled 16 , and we are aware of only one previous study that has compiled multiple paleohurricane sediment records into a basin-wide hurricane estimate 17 . The paleohurricane proxy network has been substantially enhanced since then (2009) by efforts to increase the density and geographic coverage of sites, and also by producing new high resolution records from coastal karst basins [18][19][20][21][22][23] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Last Millennium Hurricane Activity linked to Endogenous Climate Variability

Wallace

Vecchi

Donnelly

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Although Atlantic hurricane risk is expected to increase in a warming climate, projecting trends in hurricane frequency over the present century is still highly uncertain. The short instrumental record limits our understanding of hurricane activity and its relationship to climate, especially on multi-decadal and longer time scales. Here we extend the instrumental hurricane frequency record using two independent sources of information: (1) a reconstruction of basin-wide Atlantic hurricane frequency over the last millennium, developed from sedimentary paleohurricane records; (2) a statistical model of hurricane activity using sea surface temperatures (SSTs) from the Last Millennium Reanalysis (LMR) datasets. We find statistically significant agreement between the two estimates, suggesting that a robust climate signal of hurricane frequency over the past millennium can be captured from proxy data. Neither estimate of hurricane frequency indicates that the late 20th century hurricane frequency is outside the range seen over the past millennium. Numerical simulations using a hurricane-permitting climate model suggest that hurricane activity over the last millennium was likely driven by endogenous climate variability and linked to anomalously warm SSTs over the Atlantic Main Development Region (MDR) as well as cold phases of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) SSTs. The forced signal estimated from the Last Millennium Ensemble (LME) project suggests that volcanic eruptions can induce peaks in hurricane activity, but such peaks would likely be too weak to be detected from reconstruction records due to large endogenous variability.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, we use the most updated network of high-resolution and well dated sediment-based paleohurricane records [18][19][20][21]24 to produce a basin-scale estimate of North Atlantic TC frequency for the last millennium (Fig. 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Last Millennium Hurricane Activity linked to Endogenous Climate Variability

Wallace

Vecchi

Donnelly

et al. 2023

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Thus, we condense all event beds down to 1 cm, remove them for age-depth modeling, and then reinsert them following age-depth estimation. We distinguished event beds from background variations in sand content by following the methods of Lane et al (2011) 79 and Wallace et al (2021) 47 . We calculated the coarse anomaly by removing a ten-point moving average from the sand content data.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Northwestern Pacific tropical cyclone activity enhanced by increased Asian dust emissions during the Little Ice Age

Yang

Piper

et al. 2022

Nat Commun

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Instrumental records reveal that intense tropical cyclone (TC) activity varies with tropical sea surface temperature (SST) on annual-decadal scales. Drivers of intense TC activity at the centennial-millennial scale are less clear, due to the sparseness of pre-observational reconstructions. Here, we present a new 2 kyr continuous activity record of intense TCs from offshore eastern China. Our reconstruction indicates that this site witnessed enhanced TC activity during relatively warm periods, with a widespread increase in TC activity during the later part of the Little Ice Age. This latter observation reveals that enhanced TC activity was synchronized with increased Asian dust emissions during the Little Ice Age. TC activity was also lower in the late Roman Warm Period, when SST was higher but Asian dust emissions were lower than in the early phase. Such patterns suggest a centennial-millennial link between TC climatology and a combination of SST changes and Asian dust levels.

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“…At the onset of the last millennium, GBAM‐Stack displays a rise in activity to ∼6 hurricanes/century from 1090 to 1170 CE while South Andros, Long Island (Figure 4f; Long Island Blue Hole‐central Bahamas; Wallace et al., 2021c), and Middle Caicos all experience relatively low hurricane frequency until 1150 CE, 1200 CE, and 1550 CE (respectively). Punctuated centennial‐scale periods of substantially heightened hurricane frequency were recorded across the Bahamian Archipelago throughout the Little Ice Age (LIA) from ∼1300 to 1850 CE (Mann, 2002; Mann et al., 2009b; Miller et al., 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More Frequent Hurricane Passage Across the Bahamian Archipelago During the Little Ice Age

Winkler,

van Hengstum,

Donnelly

et al. 2023

Paleoceanog and Paleoclimatol

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The year 2020 Common Era (CE) experienced the highest number of named tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean since 1850 CE, but the short instrumental record makes it challenging to assess if this level of activity is statistically meaningful. Here, we present two near‐annually resolved hurricane reconstructions from sediment archived in two blue holes located only 300 m apart on the northern margin of Grand Bahama. These two blue holes provide a replicated signal of hurricanes passing within a 50–100 km radius over the last 1,800 years, and the long‐term reconstructions document multiple 50‐to‐150‐year intervals when hurricane frequency was significantly higher than it has been over the last 100 years. These two records were first merged into a single stack, and then compiled with five other high‐resolution reconstructions from across the Bahamian Archipelago to form a single 1500‐year record of Bahamian hurricane frequency. This new Bahamian Compilation documents more hurricanes passing ∼75°W from 21°N to 26°N during the Little Ice Age (LIA; 1300–1850 CE) relative to the prior millennium and the last 170 years. The US Eastern Seaboard also experienced heightened hurricane activity during the LIA, whereas the Gulf of Mexico and Southern Caribbean were inactive. This suggests that despite a globally cooler climate, regional climate conditions during the LIA remained favorable for cyclogenesis and intensification along certain Atlantic hurricane pathways. Perhaps heightened Sahel rainfall during the LIA indicates an increase in African Easterly waves, which in turn possibly seeded more tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Main Development Region.

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1,050 years of Hurricane Strikes on Long Island in The Bahamas

Cited by 15 publications

References 84 publications

Last Millennium Hurricane Activity linked to Endogenous Climate Variability

Last Millennium Hurricane Activity linked to Endogenous Climate Variability

Northwestern Pacific tropical cyclone activity enhanced by increased Asian dust emissions during the Little Ice Age

More Frequent Hurricane Passage Across the Bahamian Archipelago During the Little Ice Age

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