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Paleotempestology Kam-biu Liu, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, 227 HoweRussell Geoscience Complex, Baton Rouge, LA 708034105 USA 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Paleotempestology is an emerging field of science that studies past tropical cyclone activity beyond the period of instrumental observations, typically spanning the last several centuries to five millennia. Tropical cyclones are known by different names in different regions of the world – hurricanes in North America, typhoons in the Northwest Pacific, and cyclones in South Asia and Australia. Here the term hurricanes is sometimes used interchangeably with all other types of tropical cyclones. p0010 In the United States and other parts of the world, the instrumental record of tropical cyclone activity is essentially confined to the last 150 years. This record is too short to fully capture the occurrence of the rare but most destructive hurricanes – the ‘catastrophic’ hurricanes of category 4 and 5 intensity according to the Saffir-Simpson scale. Therefore, by providing a long-term, empirical record of hurricane activity back to 5000 years, paleotempestology is useful for revealing the spatial and temporal variability of
Geological Proxy Records
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A landfalling hurricane is an important geological p0020 and ecological agent that can severely impact coastal landforms, ecosystems, and sedimentary and hydrological processes on the coast (Figure 1). These geophysical and ecological impacts may leave a geological record that can be deciphered by means of proxy techniques. Several geological or biological proxies are potentially useful in reconstructing past hurricane strikes, but so far the proxy that has proven the most useful is overwash sand layers deposited in the sediments of coastal lakes and marshes (Liu and Fearn, 1993; Liu, 2004a; Donnelly and Webb, 2004). Overwash Sand Layers in Coastal Lakes
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When a hurricane makes landfall, the strong onshore p0025 winds, especially in the forward-right quadrant of the intense low-pressure system, generate a storm surge directed towards the coast. Generally speaking, the
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hurricane activity and deciphering its relationship with global climatic changes. Two main sources of data are available for recon- p0015 structing past hurricane activity to beyond the instrumental period – geological proxy records, and historical documentary records. Therefore they underscore two major approaches to the study of paleotempestology – geological and archival.
f0005 Figure 1 Environmental impacts of catastrophic hurricanes (modified from Liu, 2004a). A landfalling hurricane may cause a storm surge that overtops beach barriers, resulting in the formation of an overwash fan and the deposition of a sand layer in the sediments of a back-barrier lake or marsh. The strong wind may cause massive damage or mortality to trees, leaving a paleoecological record of disturbance and succession, including the occurrence of post-hurricane fires. Heavy precipitation may cause flooding in the lowlands, and soil erosion and landslide in the uplands. The 18O-depleted signal in the hurricane rains may be recorded in the cellulose of tree rings and the calcium carbonate of speleothems and coral skeletons if it is not attenuated by hydrological processes.
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stronger the hurricane, the higher the storm surge. For intense hurricanes, the storm surge plus the wave run-up may overwash the coastal barrier, causing sand to be eroded from the beach or dunes and deposited in the lake or marsh behind it. Stratigraphically, the overwash fan exists in the form of a sand layer, which is thickest near the shore and thins out towards the center of the lake (Liu and Fearn, 1993, 2000a; Liu, 2004a). In a coastal lake that had been subjected to repeated overwash events in the past, the sediment stratigraphy should contain multiple sand layers that contain a stratigraphic record of intense hurricane strikes (Figure 2). These sand layers are composed of fine to coarse sand that is usually well-sorted, and have abrupt contacts with the more organic, finer, and darker sediments both above and below. Their thickness may range from a few mm to more than 10 cm (Figure 3). They can be identified either visually or by means of sedimentological techniques such as losson-ignition analysis of core samples (Liu and Fearn, 2000a). A chronology of past overwash events or hurricane strikes can be established by means of radiometric dating techniques such as radiocarbon (14C), lead-210 (210Pb), or cesium-137 (137Cs) dating, which may be supplemented by using stratigraphic markers such as pollen and lead pollutants (Donnelly and Webb, 2004). For any particular location, the return period of hurricanes of a specific intensity category can be calculated by tallying up the number of events occurring over a given period of time.
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Figure 3 Photograph of three prominent sand layers in the 50– 78 cm segment of core 9 from Western Lake, northwestern Florida, and the corresponding water and organic matter content curves determined by loss-on-ignition. Radiocarbon dates are on the right (after Liu and Fearn, 2000a).
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f0010 Figure 2 Hypothetical pattern of sand-layer deposition in a coastal lake subjected to repeated storm overwash events in the past. The overwash sand layers are thicker near the sand barrier and become thinner towards the lake center. A core taken from site B will contain more and thicker sand layers than one taken from site C. A core taken from site A, however, may consist of all sand without discrete layers (after Liu, 2004a).
The intensity of the paleohurricanes may be much p0030 harder to infer from the proxy record than their frequencies. As a first approximation, it can be assumed that stronger hurricanes tend to produce higher storm surges and thus more extensive overwash fans. Therefore, within the same core, sand layer thickness can be used as a rough indicator of storm intensity (Figure 4). The sedimentary impact of recent hurricanes of known intensity can be used as a modern analog for calibrating the intensity estimate of paleohurricanes. For example, based on sedimentstratigraphic evidence that the overwash sand layer deposited by Hurricane Frederic, a category 3 hurricane that struck Alabama in 1979, was only confined to the nearshore sediments, Liu and Fearn (1993) inferred that older sand layers that occurred in cores taken from the center of Lake Shelby (where the Frederic sand layer was absent) must have been deposited by prehistoric hurricanes of category 4 or 5 intensity. Coastal lakes from Alabama and northwestern Florida have yielded proxy records of catastrophic (category 4 and 5) hurricane strikes that span the last 5000 years (Liu and Fearn, 1993, 2000a).
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f0020 Figure 4 Model showing the positive relationship among hurricane intensities, extent of overwash fans, and thickness of sand layers in sediment cores (after Liu and Fearn, 2000a). Top: Hypothetical sedimentary stratigraphies of eleven cores (#1–11) taken from different parts of a lake impacted by intense hurricanes and associated overwash events six times during the past 3000 years. Thick and thin sand layers are represented by cross-shaded bands and dotted lines, respectively. Bottom: Hypothetical pattern of overwash sand deposition in the lake where the eleven cores were taken. Solid, dotted, or dashed lines inside the lake denote the horizontal extents of the six overwash fans (labeled A-4–F) corresponding to the six hurricane strikes and overwash events (arrows). Thicknesses of the arrows are proportional to the intensity of the hurricanes according to the Saffir-Simpson scale, the latter also designated by the circled number below each arrow. Numbered black dots (#1-4–11) represent cores taken from the lake.
The same principle and research methods can be applied to coastal back-barrier marshes for generating proxy records of past hurricane strikes (Donnelly and Webb, 2004; Donnelly et al., 2001a, 2001b, 2004). These back-barrier marshes are typically peat-accumulating environments situated behind barrier beaches. As in coastal lakes, overtopping of the barrier beach by storm surge will lead to the formation of an overwash fan behind the barrier, which will be expressed stratigraphically as a sand layer
sandwiched between marsh peat (Figure 5). If the barrier beach is breached by the storm surge to form an inlet, a large flood-tidal delta may be formed across the back-barrier marsh, which may even extend into the lagoon or bay behind it (Donnelly and Webb, 2004). Like overwash sand layers, these flood-tidal delta deposits are usually composed of fine to coarse sand with a sharp contact with the underlying peat. But unlike overwash sand, the mean grain-size of these flood-tidal delta deposits tends to be more spatially variable, and they often
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f0025 Figure 5 Photographs of overwash sand layers in back-barrier marsh sediments. (A) Three sand layers near the top of a core from Little Harbor Marsh, Massachusetts, deposited by three historic hurricanes: Bob (1991), Carol (1954), and the 1938 Hurricane. (B) Two sand layers in cores taken from Succotash Marsh, Rhode Island, deposited by Hurricane Carol (1954) and the 1938 Hurricane. (C) Two sand layers deposited by the same hurricanes are exposed in a stratigraphic section at Barn Island Marsh, Connecticut (after Donnelly and Webb, 2004).
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contains ripple laminations, detrital organic laminae, shell hash layers, and disarticulated shells (Donnelly and Webb, 2004). p0040 Because back-barrier marshes are formed only at sea level, the accumulation of the marsh peat and the preservation of the overwash deposits or the floodtidal delta deposits it embeds are sensitive to sea-level changes. Along a transgressive coast like that of the northeastern United States, the barrier systems including the back-barrier marshes have been
migrating landward during the late-Holocene. This implies that, as the distance between the beach barrier and the coring site increases with time since the present, it would have taken stronger hurricanes to deposit the same material in the older sand layers than in the younger sand layers (Figure 6). Compared with coastal lakes, back-barrier marshes tend to have higher sedimentation rates. Therefore, back-barrier marshes may permit high-resolution reconstruction of historical hurricane strikes, but
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f0030 Figure 6 Cross-section of conceptual model of overwash deposition and the landward migration of the barrier-marsh system in a regime of rising sea level. Overwash fans are preserved as sea level rises and they are covered with marsh deposits. A flood-tidal delta was formed at an earlier time when an inlet was cut through the beach barrier (after Donnelly and Webb, 2004).
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the length of their sedimentary record may be shorter. Proxy records obtained from back-barrier marshes in Rhode Island and New Jersey only extend back to approximately 700 years (Donnelly et al., 2001a, 2001b). p0045 Estuarine or deltaic marshes formed near the mouth of major rivers along the Gulf of Mexico coast can also provide proxy records of past hurricane strikes (Liu and Fearn, 2000b). A beach barrier may or may not be present, but these marshes are inundated by the storm surge during an intense hurricane strike. Stormy waves and the storm surge may stir up the silt and mud from the bottom of the adjacent bays, and a layer of lagoonal mud will be deposited on the marsh surface, forming a storm deposit. This storm deposit may consist of sand, silt, or clay, depending on the hydrodynamic conditions of the storm surge and the sediment supply. This layer may also be recognized by the presence of marine microfossils such as dinoflagellates and foraminifera derived from the bay bottom. Because of their high sedimentation rates, proxy records spanning 5000–6000 years have been obtained from these estuarine/deltaic marshes in Louisiana and Mississippi (Liu and Fearn, 2001a; Liu, 2004a).
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Paleohurricane Activity and Global Climate Changes
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Since the early 1990s, about three dozen lake or marsh sites along the U.S. Gulf coast and Atlantic coast have been investigated for paleotempestology (Liu, 2004a), but only a handful with well-dated and well-validated proxy records have been published, of which only a few span up to 5000 years. Proxy records from the Gulf of Mexico coast have revealed that hurricane activity has varied on the millennial time scale, with a relatively quiet period during the past 1000 years preceded by a hyperactive period about 1000 to 3800 years ago (Liu, 2004a) (Figure 7). Liu and Fearn (2000a) proposed the ‘Bermuda High hypothesis’, which explains this millennial-scale variation in hurricane activity observed along the Gulf coast in terms of long-term shifts in the position of the Bermuda High, the subtropical anticyclone situated over the western North Atlantic Ocean. According to this hypothesis, a southwestward shift of the Bermuda High would steer more hurricanes towards the Gulf coast, whereas a northeastward shift would steer more hurricanes towards the Atlantic coast (Figure 8). Large-scale changes in the North Atlantic circulation system from 4000– 3000 years ago, which resulted in a southwestward shift of the Bermuda High, might have led to the occurrence of the hyperactive period along the Gulf
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Figure 7 Chronostratigraphic patterns of overwash sand layers (horizontal bars) representing catastrophic hurricane strikes over the last 4500 years documented at four sites along the Gulf coast from west to east: Pearl River Marsh (Louisiana), Pascagoula Marsh (Mississippi), Lake Shelby (Alabama), Western Lake (Florida) (after Liu, 2004a). The clustering of events between approximately 1000 and 3400 14C years BP suggests the occurrence of a hyperactive period bracketed by relatively quiet periods. Each site was directly struck by catastrophic hurricanes 9 to 12 times during the last 3400 14C years (or 3800 calendar years), suggesting a return period of approximately 350 years.
coast (Liu and Fearn, 2000a). This hypothesis implies an anti-phase relationship between the Gulf coast and the Atlantic coast. Such an inverse relationship is supported by a statistical analysis that links the historical records of hurricane activity from the Gulf and Atlantic coasts with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which is related to the position of the Bermuda High (Elsner et al., 2000). Paleoclimatic records from North America and adjacent regions are consistent with the scenario of a southwestward shift in the Bermuda High during 4000–3000 year ago (Liu and Fearn, 2000a). A paleohurricane proxy record from South Carolina on the Atlantic coast also seems to support the Bermuda High hypothesis (Scott et al., 2003).
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otherwise oligohaline or brackish coastal lakes or marshes during overwash or storm surge processes will introduce marine microorganisms and change the salinity of these coastal ecosystems. Therefore, marine microfossils such as foraminifera, dinoflagellates, and pelagic diatoms can be used as proxies for past hurricane impacts (Hippensteel and Martin, 1999; Collins et al., 1999; Scott et al., 2003; Liu et al., 2003). Similarly, the pollen and charcoal contents in these coastal sediment cores can serve as supplementary proxies to decipher the ecological impacts of past hurricane strikes on coastal ecosystems, including the occurrence of post-hurricane wildfires (Liu et al., 2003). In addition, environmental impacts of past hurricane strikes can be studied at high resolution by analyzing the stratigraphic variations in geochemistry, mineralogy, and grain size in coastal lake sediment cores (Donnelly, 2005).
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In addition to overwash sand layers, other biostratigraphic or geochemical indicators can be used as proxies or supplementary evidence for reconstructing past hurricane strikes from coastal sedimentary archives. Opal phytoliths (microscopic silica bodies formed in or between plant cells) associated with the sand layers can be used to ascertain the overwash origin of the sand layers, because topsoil or sediment samples from sand dunes (from which the overwash sand is derived) and other coastal depositional environments contain different phytolith assemblages (Lu and Liu, 2005). The intrusion of seawater into
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While sediments from coastal lakes and marshes have p0060 proven to be the most useful data archive in paleotempestology, other natural archives and proxies have recently been explored. In Australia, chronostratigraphic series of shelly beach ridges have been interpreted as proxy records of tropical cyclone strikes during the late Holocene (Nott and Hayne, 2001; Hayne and Chappell, 2001). Another new and promising proxy is the stable-isotopic signal preserved in the cellulose of tree rings (Miller et al., 2003), the calcium carbonate of stalagmites in limestone caves (Frappier et al., in review), or the aragonitic skeletons of reef corals (Cohen, 2001). Due to intense convection and the fractionation process, rainwater produced by hurricanes has a highly depleted oxygen isotopic signal (i.e., more negative 18O values) compared with that of low-latitude thunderstorms (Lawrence and Gedzelman, 1996). After a hurricane strike, this isotopically depleted signal from the intense hurricane rains may persist in surface or soil water for several weeks before it is attenuated, and may be incorporated into the growth rings of trees, speleothems in limestone caves, and reef corals in coastal lagoons. A key to applying the 18O proxy in paloetempestology lies in the ability to sample these annually-banded archives and to detect the isotopically depleted signals at sub-seasonal resolutions. So far, some progress has been made in demonstrating the potential of using these new archives in developing high-resolution proxy records of hurricane activity during the past decades to a few centuries.
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For the historical period during which written records are available, information about past tropical cyclone activity can be extracted from documentary sources derived from books or other data archives. The length of time covered by these documentary records varies from one region of the world to another, but rarely exceeds a few hundred to a thousand years. Though comparatively short in time span, an advantage of these historical documentary records over the geological proxy data is that they usually have very high temporal resolution and precision, typically allowing reconstruction to the year, month, and even day of the event. Where both documentary and geological proxy records are available, these two sources of data can complement each other and provide powerful means of cross-validation and data calibration. U.S. Data Sources and Reconstructions
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For the Atlantic Basin including the United States, six-hourly data on the positions and intensities (central pressures and wind speeds) of all known hurricanes and tropical storms for the past century and half since 1851 are available from the National Hurricane Center’s North Atlantic hurricane database, or HURDAT 2 (Landsea et al., 2004). For the historical period from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century, information about hurricane activity largely comes from documentary sources including newspapers, plantation diaries, and some instrumental weather records (Mock, 2004). Several major inventories of historical hurricanes affecting the United States and the Atlantic Basin (including
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For the Caribbean region, documentary evidence p0075 derived from the above-mentioned data sources in the United States or from local newspapers, diaries, or annals in the Caribbean has been used to compile inventories of hurricane activity for the past five centuries (Millas, 1968; Chenoweth, 2003). However, two vast, though yet relatively unexplored, sources of documentary data are available for reconstructing the frequency patterns of historical hurricane activity – Spanish archives and British archives (Garcia Herrera et al., 2004). The Spanish archives consist of millions of official documents recording all aspects of daily life in the Spanish colonies in the Americas from the Columbian contact to the nineteenth century. Most of these colonial documents are preserved in the Archivo General de Indias (A.G.I.) in Seville, and several other archives in Madrid and Valladolid. The British archives, mainly starting
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the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico region) have been compiled (Ludlam, 1963; Fernandez-Partagas and Diaz, 1996). These documentary data, often narrative and spatially uneven, can be quantified and statistically analyzed to reveal the frequency patterns of hurricane strikes for selected regions. For example, a 223-year time series of tropical cyclone frequencies for South Carolina from AD 1778 to 2000 – the longest such continuous time series in the United States, has been produced (Mock, 2004). This time series reveals that two periods of unprecedented, very active tropical cyclone activity occurred in the 1830s and from 1880 to 1910 (Figure 9). The South Carolina frequency pattern seems to be broadly similar to those compiled for some Caribbean regions.
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only in the mid-seventeenth century and covering a shorter time span than their Spanish counterparts, principally consist of mariners’ logbooks kept on board Royal Navy ships during the period of English colonization of the Caribbean. Most of the logbooks are archived in the Public Records Office (PRO) and the National Maritime Museum (NMM) in London. The potential of these voluminous Spanish and British archives as a rich data source for paleotempestology is high, but work has only begun to fully exploit this potential due to the vast amount of documents contained in them (Garcia Herrera et al., 2004). A reconstruction of Caribbean hurricane and storm activity for the period AD 1500– 1900 using the Spanish archives shows two active periods in the sixteenth and the eighteenth century separated by a relatively inactive period in the seventeenth century, with a peak in activity during 1766– 1780 (Garcia Herrera et al., 2005) (Figure 10). Chinese Documentary Records and Guangdong Typhoon Time-series
By far the longest documentary record of tropical cyclone activity can be found in China, where the historical record of typhoon landfalls spans more than 1000 years. Abundant information on typhoon landfalls can be found in the official histories commissioned by the central imperial government (zheng
shi), Veritable Records (shi lu) of the Emperor’s daily activities, semi-official local gazettes (fang zhi) written by scholars at the county, district, or provincial level, and unofficial literary works such as personal diaries, travel logbooks, and poems (Louie and Liu, 2004). These Chinese historical sources reveal that the term jufeng was coined as early as AD 470 to designate typhoon (‘‘a wind that comes in all four directions’’) as a specific meteorological phenomenon that is distinct from other kinds of storms (Louie and Liu, 2003). A typhoon that struck the Shandong Peninsula in eastern China in AD 816 is probably the earliest recorded tropical cyclone landfall in the world (Louie and Liu, 2003). Among the four sources of Chinese documentary p0085 data mentioned above, the local gazettes or fang zhi, especially those kept by coastal counties in southern and eastern China, are the richest data source for historical typhoon landfalls. For the majority of counties in China, there is at least one volume of county gazette that is accessible in a public library in China or overseas. Liu et al. (2001) have produced a 935-year time series of typhoon landfalls for the Guangdong Province of southern China spanning the period from AD 975 to 1909 based on data extracted from local gazettes (Figure 11). This millennial-long tropical cyclone time series – the longest in the world – reveals an approximately 50-year periodicity that may
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period of the rare but most extreme hurricanes. For example, it is impossible to determine, based on the historical record, whether landfall by a category 5 hurricane such as Andrew or Camille in New Orleans is a 100-year or 500-year event, because New Orleans has not been directly hit by a catastrophic hurricane during the past 150 years. Paleotempestology can quantify that uncertainty by generating geological proxy records of catastrophic hurricane strikes that span up to 5000 years, which can be translated into an estimate of hurricane return periods and landfall probabilities (Figure 13). Proxy records from five sites along the Gulf coast have shown that each site was directly struck by catastrophic hurricanes about 9–12 times during the last 3800 years, implying a return period of approximately 350 years, or a landfall probability of about 0.3% per year (Liu, 2004a) (Figure 7). This empirical estimate, which cannot be derived without paleotempestology, is of vital importance for risk assessors, emergency management agencies, regional planners, civil engineers, and insurance companies (Liu, 2004b).
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be linked to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) (Liu et al., 2001). The data also show two prominent peaks in Guangdong typhoon activity occurring at AD 1660–1680 and AD 1850–1880. Remarkably, these two typhoon maxima coincide with two of the coldest and driest episodes in northern and central China during the Little Ice Age (Figure 12). It was hypothesized that the apparent increase in typhoon activity in Guangdong during these cold episodes was caused by a southward displacement of the storm tracks associated with an intensification of the westerlies and a southward shift of the subtropical high-pressure system, resulting in more typhoons making landfall in Guangdong, with fewer striking the coastal provinces further north (Liu et al., 2001). Statistical analysis of modern and historical typhoon data from the western Pacific suggests that more frequent occurrence of La Nina ˜ conditions may also have caused a change in the predominant storm tracks, resulting in more typhoons moving straightly westward to hit Guangdong instead of recurving northwest to hit Japan (Elsner and Liu, 2003).
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f0055 Figure 11 Time series of typhoons striking Guangdong Province, southern China, from AD 1000 to 1909, reconstructed from Chinese local gazette (fang zhi) records. The vertical bars represent annual frequencies, and the continuous line represents the 21-year running mean (after Liu et al., 2001).
Paleotempestology is an important component of Quaternary paleoclimatology because it sheds light on the temporal and spatial variability patterns of tropical cyclone activity at centennial to millennial time scales, and permits a better understanding of how this variability may be linked to global climate changes during the late-Holocene. But in addition, paleotempestology also has important practical applications to society. For any particular coastal location, uncertainty about the hurricane risk is exacerbated by the lack of empirical data on the return
Research Needs and Future Research Directions
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Paleotempestology is a relatively young science that p0095 started in the early 1990s (Liu and Fearn, 1993). The term paleotempestology was coined by Kerry Emanuel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1998. It has since developed significantly in scope, in theory and methods, and in the number of practitioners. The following research needs and directions can be envisioned in the near future.
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U.S. Atlantic coast, the Caribbean region, and Australia. However, only a handful of records have been published. There is a strong need for more wellvalidated and well-dated proxy records from the United States and the Caribbean coasts, and for new proxy records in other tropical cyclone-prone regions of the world, especially China, Japan, and South and Southeast Asia. 2. Development of new proxies and archives – A promising research direction in paleotempestology involves the development of multi-proxy techniques in detecting the geophysical and ecological impacts of past hurricanes. To date, the proxy that has proved most effective in paleotempestology is the overwash sediments preserved in coastal lakes and marshes. Future methodological advances will include the development of new proxies such as stable isotopic signals in tree rings, speleothems, and corals. 3. Coupling of geological and documentary archives – The voluminous documentary records in the Spanish, British, and Chinese archives have barely been exploited for the reconstruction of tropical cyclone activities during the past centuries. Much more needs to be done. Wherever both geological and documentary records exist, they should be integrated for data calibration and comparison. 4. Improved calibration of proxy records with modern analog studies – While the frequency of past hurricane strikes can be estimated by enumerating the overwash sand layers in a core, the reconstruction of paleohurricane intensity is a more challenging task in paleotempestology. Sand layer thickness remains the best indicator of hurricane intensity, but the calibration of the relationship between these two parameters can be improved by better understanding of the geophysical impacts and sedimentological signatures of modern hurricanes of known intensities. For example, recent intense hurricanes such as Camille, Andrew, Hugo, Ivan, and Katrina can be used as modern analogs to aid proxy-based paleohurricane intensity reconstructions. 5. Integration of proxy data with modeling results – Another approach in improving the intensity estimate for paleohurricanes from proxy data is by means of computer modeling experiments. Storm surge modeling can simulate the overwash processes under various boundary conditions with regard to hurricane intensity, oceanographic response, and coastal terrain characteristics. These modeling results can be integrated with the proxy record to help validate the intensity estimates. 6. Statistical applications in paleotempestology – When coupled with the historical hurricane record, proxy data can improve our estimates of the
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f0060 Figure 12 Comparison between (G) the Guangdong typhoon time series (21-year running mean) with other paleoclimatic time series from China and the northern hemisphere for the last millennium: (A) phenologically derived temperature in China, (B) winter temperature in the lower Yangtze river valley, (C) number of Chinese counties affected by drought, (D) frequency of dust rains in China, (E) tree-ring-based reconstruction of April-to-July precipitation in Huashan, north-central China, (F) northern hemisphere temperature anomaly derived from a variety of paleoclimatic data sources (after Liu et al., 2001). The two peaks in Guangdong typhoon activity in AD 1660–1680 and 1850–1880 correspond with two of the coldest and driest episodes in central and northern China during the Little Ice Age.
1. Expansion of geographical coverage and spatial data network – Early proxy work in paleotempestology started in the Gulf of Mexico coast, but more recently proxy records have been obtained from the
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f0065 Figure 13 Schematic diagram showing the general principles and methods employed in reconstructing past hurricane strike events from sedimentary proxies and archives (top panels). The return periods or landfall probabilities of hurricanes can be calculated from the chronology of past hurricane strikes (middle panels). The bottom panel shows some of the potential users of information derived from paleotempestology (modified from Liu, 2004b).
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hurricane risk in a region by providing a longer, though chronologically less precise, record of past events, especially the extreme events. These historical and proxy data can be used in the statistical modeling of wind speed exceedance probabilities. Advanced statistical techniques such as Bayesian analysis and extreme value theory can be applied to the modern and proxy data to reduce the uncertainty of error estimates and to improve the assessment of hurricane risks along the coast. Work has just begun in this research direction in paleotempestology.
References
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b0050 Elsner, J. B., and Liu, K.-b (2003). Examining the ENSO-Typhoon hypothesis. Climate Research 25, 43–54. b0055 Elsner, J. B., Liu, K.-b, and Kocher, B. L. (2000). Spatial variations in major U.S. hurricane activity: Statistics and a physical mechanism. Journal of Climate 13, 2293–2305. b0060 Fernandez-Partagas, J., and Diaz, H. F. (1996). Atlantic hurricanes in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 77, 2899–2906. b0065 Frappier AB, Sahagian D, Carpenter SJ, Gonzalez LA, and Frappier BR (in review). A stalagmite stable isotope record of recent tropical cyclone events. Geology. b0070 Garcia Herrera, R., Gimeno, L., Ribera, P., and Hernandez, E. (2005). New records of Atlantic hurricanes from Spanish documentary sources. Journal of Geophysical Research 110, D03109. b0075 Garcia Herrera, R., Rubio, F., Wheeler, D., Hernandez, E., Prieto, M. R., and Gimero, L. (2004). The Use of Spanish and British Documentary Sources in the Investigation of Atlantic Hurricane Incidence in Historical Times. In Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future (R. J. Murnane and K.-b Liu, Eds.), pp. 149–176. Columbia University Press. b0080 Hayne, M., and Chappell, J. (2001). Cyclone frequency during the last 5000 years from Curacoa Island, Queensland. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 168, 201–219. b0085 Hippensteel, S. P., and Martin, R. E. (1999). Foraminifera as an indicator of overwash deposits, barrier island sediment supply, and barrier island evolution: Folly Island, South Carolina. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 149, 115–125. b0090 Lawrence, J. R., and Gedzelman, S. D. (1996). Low stable isotope ratios of tropical cyclone rains. Geophysical Research Letters 23, 527–530. b0095 Liu, K.-b (2004a). Paleotempestology: Principles, Methods, and Examples from Gulf Coast Lake Sediments. In Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future (R. J. Murnane and K.-b Liu, Eds.), pp. 13–57. Columbia University Press. b0100 Liu, K.-b (2004b). Paleotempestology: Geographic Solutions to Hurricane Hazard Assessment and Risk Prediction. In WorldMinds: Geographical Perspectives on 100 Problems (B. Warf, D. Janelle and K. Hansen, Eds.), pp. 443–448. Kluwer. b0105 Liu, K.-b, and Fearn, M. L. (1993). Lake-sediment record of late Holocene hurricane activities from coastal Alabama. Geology 21, 793–796. b0110 Liu, K.-b, and Fearn, M. L. (2000a). Reconstruction of prehistoric landfall frequencies of catastrophic hurricanes in northwestern Florida from lake sediment records. Quaternary Research 54, 238–245. b0115 Liu, K.-b, and Fearn, M. L. (2000b). Holocene History of Catastrophic Hurricane Landfalls Along the Gulf of Mexico
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Please check the postal address.>Professor Kam-biu Liu Dept of Geography and Anthropology Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA
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Abstract: This chapter provides an overview of paleotempestology, an emerging field of science that studies past tropical cyclone activity by means of geological or archival techniques. Overwash sand layers preserved in the sediments of coastal lakes and marshes can provide proxy evidence of paleohurricane landfalls. Other promising proxies and archives include storm-generated beach ridges, marine microfossils, pollen, phytoliths, and stable isotopic signals recorded in tree rings, speleothems, and reef corals. Historical documentary evidence of hurricane and typhoon activities during the past several centuries can be obtained from newspapers, plantation diaries, and early instrumental records in the U.S. mariners’ logbooks in British archives, colonial records in Spanish archives, and official histories, unofficial literature, and local gazettes in China. Paleotempestological studies from the United States and Caribbean coasts and China have revealed a pattern of millennial- to century-scale variations in tropical cyclone activities that can be related to global and regional climate changes during the late-Holocene.
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Keywords: archival techniques, Bermuda High hypothesis, coastal lakes and marshes, geological proxy records, Gulf of Mexico coast historical documentary records, hurricanes, landfall probability, overwash sand layers, paleohurricanes, proxies, tropical cyclones, typhoons
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