Atlantic hurricanes and climate over the past 1,500 years

Abstract

A number of past studies have attempted to place modern Atlantic TC activity in a longer-term context using regional proxy evidence of past landfalling Atlantic hurricane activity [6][7][8] . Some studies 4 have sought to infer past changes in activity from plausible local conditioning factors such as wind strength and Sea Surface Temperature (SST), though the interpretations of these studies have been contested 5 . Qualitative comparisons between paleo-hurricane reconstructions appear to show some temporal coherence 8-9 .However, no past studies have attempted to synthesize multiple records from distinct regions into a basin-integrated reconstruction of Atlantic hurricane activity. Moreover, no past studies have sought to quantitatively relate estimated variations in hurricane or TC activity to reconstructions of the key large-scale climate factors known to have a 3 significant influence on modern Atlantic TC activity. Here we produce an empirical record of past landfalling Atlantic hurricane activity by combining information from multiple sedimentary records of TC-induced overwash. Further we compare these resulting estimates to independent statistical model predictions of past TC activity driven by proxy-based large-scale climate reconstructions.Sediment-based overwash reconstructions of TC landfall are limited in number, but span a wide geographic area across the North Atlantic basin impacted by hurricanes. Our compilation includes (Figure 1) a site from the Caribbean (Vieques, PR 6,9,10 ), one from the U.S. Gulf Coast 11 , one from the southeastern U.S. coast 8 , three from the mid-Atlantic coast (one from New York 9 and two from New Jersey 12,13 ) and two from southeastern New England (one from Rhode Island 14 and another from Massachusetts 15 ) yielding 5 distinct regional series. We obtained a probabilistic estimate of past basin-wide landfalling hurricane activity using an appropriately weighted combination of the information from these 5 regional series, and incorporating radiocarbon age model uncertainties.An independent estimate of past tropical cyclone activity was obtained using a statistical model for Atlantic TC counts. This previously developed and validated 16,3 statistical model conditions annual Atlantic TC counts on three key large-scale climate state variables tied to historical variations in Atlantic TC counts: (i) Sea Surface Temperature (SST) over the main development region (MDR) for tropical Atlantic TCs, which reflects favorability of the local thermodynamic environment, (ii) the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) which influences the amount of (unfavorable) vertical wind shear, and (iii) the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phenomena which affects the tracking of storms (which influences how favorable an environment they 4 encounter). The statistical model was driven by proxy-based reconstructions 17,18 of these three state variables (Figure 2), yielding a predicted history of Atlantic TC counts for past centuries We compared the sediment-based record against the above statistical e...

A decadally-resolved paleohurricane record archived in the late Holocene sediments of a Florida sinkhole

“…B.P. in the Mann et al (2009) reconstruction is present in the Mullet Pond record but was dated approximately 100 years earlier. This discrepancy may be authentic or merely result from the differences between the Mullet Pond age model and the merged age models and associated uncertainties of the other paleohurricane reconstructions.…”

“…The Mullet Pond reconstruction shares many features with a 1500-year reconstruction of basin-wide landfalling Atlantic hurricanes, which was based on a compilation of several paleohurricane records including most of those already discussed (Mann et al 2009) (Figure 8a,b). Both the paleorecord compilation and the Mullet Pond record show increasing storm frequency between 1500 and 1000 cal.…”

Shipwreck rates reveal Caribbean tropical cyclone response to past radiative forcing

“…The Maunder Minimum (MM; 1645-1715 CE), the most severe change in solar irradiance in documented history (7,8), is of particular interest in this context, but TC proxy records that cover this period are scarce, often present a conservative estimate of the total number of storm events (9), and largely have insufficient time resolution to distinguish the MM (6,(10)(11)(12). Documentary data sets are the main source of paleotempestology information of appropriate temporal resolution, but most document-based TC studies have primarily focused on long-term TC climatology (e.g., seasonality, recurrence intervals) rather than interannual or decadal-scale variability (13,14).…”

“…To attribute significant TC changes to specific climate forcings, recent TC activity needs to be placed in a longer-term context (6). The Maunder Minimum (MM; 1645-1715 CE), the most severe change in solar irradiance in documented history (7,8), is of particular interest in this context, but TC proxy records that cover this period are scarce, often present a conservative estimate of the total number of storm events (9), and largely have insufficient time resolution to distinguish the MM (6,(10)(11)(12).…”

Science Needs for Sea-Level Adaptation Planning: Comparisons among Three U.S. Atlantic Coastal Regions

“…Presentation topics on cross-disciplinary research included observational and geological reconstructions of former sea levels (e.g., Kemp et al 2011;Horton et al 2013), tropical cyclone climatologies and storm surge modeling (e.g., Mann et al 2009;Lane et al 2011), and semi-empirical models of global sea-level rise (e.g., Vermeer and Rahmstorf 2009). The afternoon had two components: (a) two to four presentations by invited local experts on planning issues in their regions (one additional science presentation was made in the afternoon of the North Carolina workshop); and (b) breakout groups that discussed key information needs for sea level and coastal inundation planning.…”