Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Geology 287 (2011): 14-30, doi:10.1016/j.margeo.2011.07.001.
Description:
A 4500-year record of hurricane-induced storm surges is developed from sediment cores
collected from a coastal sinkhole near Apalachee Bay, Florida. Recent deposition of sand layers
in the upper sediments of the pond was found to be contemporaneous with significant, historic
storm surges at the site modeled using SLOSH and the Best Track, post-1851 A.D. dataset.
Using the historic portion of the record for calibration, paleohurricane deposits were identified
by sand content and dated using radiocarbon-based age models. Marine-indicative foraminifera,
some originating at least 5 km offshore, were present in several modern and ancient storm
deposits. The presence and long-term preservation of offshore foraminifera suggest that this site
and others like it may yield promising microfossil-based paleohurricane reconstructions in the
future. Due to the sub-decadal (~ 7 year) resolution of the record and the site’s high
susceptibility to hurricane-generated storm surges, the average, local frequency of recorded
events, approximately 3.9 storms per century, is greater than that of previously published
paleohurricane records from the region. The high incidence of recorded events permitted a time
series of local hurricane frequency during the last five millennia to be constructed. Variability in
the frequency of the largest storm layers was found to be greater than what would likely occur by
chance alone, with intervals of both anomalously high and low storm frequency identified.
However, the rate at which smaller layers were deposited was relatively constant over the last five millennia. This may suggest that significant variability in hurricane frequency has occurred
only in the highest magnitude events. The frequency of high magnitude events peaked near 6
storms per century between 2800 and 2300 years ago. High magnitude events were relatively
rare with about 0-3 storms per century occurring between 1900 to 1600 years ago and between
400 to 150 years ago. A marked decline in the number of large storm deposits, which began
around 600 years ago, has persisted through present with below average frequency over the last
150 years when compared to the preceding five millennia.
Description:
Funding for this research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the
Coastal Ocean Institute. the model. The Florida State University Marine Laboratory provided lodging during fieldwork.
This research was completed during an American Meteorological Society Graduate Fellowship,
National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and Coastal Ocean Institute Fellowship. This
work was further supported by National Science Foundation award #OCE-0903020.
Keywords:
Paleotempestology
;
Paleohurricane
;
Hurricane
;
Tropical cyclone
;
Sinkhole
;
Storm surge
;
SLOSH
;
Gulf of Mexico
;
Apalachee Bay
;
Holocene
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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