| Autor: |
Wallace, Elizabeth J., Coats, Sloan, Emanuel, Kerry, Donnelly, Jeffrey P. |
| Předmět: |
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| Zdroj: |
Geophysical Research Letters; Jan2021, Vol. 48 Issue 1, p1-10, 10p |
| Abstrakt: |
Event‐based paleohurricane reconstructions of the last millennium indicate dramatic changes in the frequency of landfalling hurricanes on centennial timescales. It is difficult to assess whether the variability captured in these paleorecords is related to changing climate or randomness. We assess whether centennial‐scale active and quiet intervals of intense hurricane activity occur in a set of synthetic storms run with boundary conditions from an earth system model simulation of the last millennium. We generate 1,000 pseudo sedimentary records for a site on South Andros Island using a Poisson random draw from this synthetic storm data set. We find that any single pseudo sedimentary record contains active and quiet intervals of hurricane activity. The 1,000‐record ensemble average, which reflects the common signal of climate variability, does not. This suggests that the record of paleohurricane activity from The Bahamas reflects variability in hurricane frequency dominated by randomness and not variability in the climatic conditions. Plain Language Summary: Sedimentary records of past hurricane strike from coastal basins in The Bahamas indicate dramatic changes in hurricane frequency over the past millennium with century‐scale periods of time with significantly different, and higher, levels of hurricane activity than has been observed during the last century. It is still unknown whether these anomalous hurricane patterns are a result of changes in climate or simply due to randomness. Here, we recreate these century scale patterns of hurricane activity for the past millennium using synthetic tropical cyclones and a model of how the passage of each storm is documented in a sediment record. We prove these patterns of activity are predominantly a result of randomness not climate changes. This work has important implications for future research into past millennium hurricanes. We cannot use single sediment records from The Bahamas to infer climate impacts on hurricane activity. Instead, we need to use regional or larger scale compilations of records to characterize hurricane activity and its drivers. Key Points: Pseudo records of past millennium hurricane activity closely replicate centennial‐scale variability found in published sediment recordsMost of the centennial‐scale signal captured in event‐based paleohurricane records from The Bahamas is due to randomness not climateThere is promise in using compilations of paleohurricane records to characterize hurricane activity and its drivers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Databáze: |
Complementary Index |
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