Regional shifts in paleohurricane activity over the last 1500 years derived from blue hole sediments offshore of Middle Caicos Island

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

卷:268

Article

Wallace, Elizabeth¹  Donnelly, Jeffrey²  van Hengstum, Peter^3,4  Winkler, Tyler⁴  Dizon, Charmille⁵  LaBella, Alexandra⁵  Lopez, Isabella⁵  d'Entremont, Nicole²  Sullivan, Richard⁴  Woodruff, Jonathan⁶  Hawkes, Andrea⁷  Maio, Christopher⁸ 

[1] MIT, Woods Hole Oceanog Inst Joint Program Oceanog, Woods Hole, MA 02543 USA

[2] Woods Hole Oceanog Inst, Dept Geol & Geophys, Woods Hole, MA 02543 USA

[3] Texas A&M Univ, Dept Marine Sci, Galveston, TX 77554 USA

[4] Texas A&M Univ, Dept Oceanog, College Stn, TX 77840 USA

[5] Northeastern Univ, Dept Marine & Environm Sci, Boston, MA 02115 USA

[6] Univ Massachusetts, Dept Geosci, Amherst, MA 01003 USA

[7] Univ N Carolina, Ctr Marine Sci, Dept Earth & Ocean Sci, Wilmington, NC 28403 USA

[8] Univ Alaska Fairbanks, Dept Geosci, Fairbanks, AK 99775 USA

关键词: Tropical cyclones;    Bahamas;    Blue holes;    Carbonate sediments;    Paleotempestology;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107126

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Coastal communities are vulnerable to sea-level rise and hurricane-induced flooding. Our ability to assess flooding risk at coastal locations is restricted by the short observational record and limited knowledge on storm surge generation during hurricanes of different strength, size and orientation. Here, we present a transect of sediment cores collected from a blue hole near Middle Caicos in the Turks & Caicos Islands. Storm deposits found across cores in the transect record the passage of hurricanes passing to the south of Middle Caicos over the past 1500 years including Hurricane Irma in 2017. The record indicates historically unprecedented multi-decadal periods of elevated storm strikes on the island. We add this new reconstruction to a compilation of near-annually resolved paleohurricane records of the past millennium in The Bahamas. This compilation indicates increased storm activity in The Bahamas from 650 to 800 CE, 930 to 1040 CE, and 1400 to 1800 CE. Taken together with compilations of published paleohurricane records from New England and the Gulf Coast of Florida, we observe periods of elevated hurricane activity in all three spatially disparate regions over the past millennium and periods when New England and the Bahama Archipelago are active while the Gulf Coast of Florida is not. We argue that both regional-scale changes in vertical wind shear patterns and shifting storm tracks may explain the discrepancies we observe between different regions of the North Atlantic. This research informs how hurricane frequency has changed over the past 1500 years specifically in the Turks & Caicos Islands and regionally along the Bahama Archipelago. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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