Paleotempestology, the study of past tropical cyclones (TCs) using geological proxy techniques, is a growing discipline that utilizes data from a broad range of sources. Most paleotempestological studies have been conducted using “established proxies,” such as grain-size analysis, loss-on-ignition, and micropaleontological indicators. More recently, however, researchers have been applying more advanced geochemical analyses, such as X-ray fluorescence core scanning and stable isotopic geochemistry, to generate new paleotempestological records. In this paper we begin by providing a list of paleotempestological studies for the western North Atlantic Basin and illustrate the spatial coverage of these studies. We then review the premises behind both established and new proxies and discuss their strengths and limitations at resolving past hurricane activity. Lastly, we suggest future directions for paleotempestological research based on our review of the literature that we argue will ultimately lead to a better understanding of TC dynamics under future climate change scenarios.
Paleotempestology, the study of past tropical cyclone activity, has grown considerably over the past two decades, and there is now a relatively dense network of sites across the Western North Atlantic Basin providing records of past tropical cyclone variability. This paper presents a new database of paleotempestological records generated from 61 studies published between 1993 and 2018 for this region. A total of 266 data entries, consisting of the calibrated ages of individual tropical cyclone events and the boundaries of ‘active’ tropical cyclone periods from the present to 8000 cal. yr BP, along with the site names, geographic coordinates, proxy indicator(s) used, materials upon which dating was undertaken, and information about the depositional basin type (e.g. lagoon, mangrove), are included in the database for each site. The database is housed at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) ( https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/21391 ) and is available for free download. This publicly available database will permit a greater number of researchers to work on questions related to past tropical cyclone dynamics and more easily allow studies of long-term spatial-temporal tropical cyclone relationships to be undertaken.
The Berkeley Earth surface temperature (BETP) project provides gridded global temperature anomaly products using an automated geostatistical approach to adjust station data for systematic biases. Despite its widespread usage, the BETP data set has not been evaluated at the national‐scale, especially in data‐sparse high latitude environments. This study provides an evaluation of the BETP product across all of Canada using 333 climate stations made available from the homogenized Environment Canada station network (HTcan). Comparison between co‐located monthly air temperature anomalies for the two data sets suggests small differences between the two products for mean surface (∼2 m) air temperature. However, the relatively minimal bias in mean temperature is a consequence of contrasting cold and warm biases in minimum and maximum air temperatures, respectively, that are larger but effectively even out when averaged together. The BETP product is shown to exhibit systematic underestimation of recent regional warming in northern Canada which when combined with an overestimation of warmth earlier in the record results in an observable reduction in warming rates for minimum and mean temperature anomalies since 1950. The temporal evolution and spatial pattern of the observed biases suggest that the BETP‐automated adjustments to station data in northern Canada miss some inhomogeneities in the raw station data. These results highlight the need for enhanced data recovery and homogenization efforts in data‐sparse high latitude regions and emphasize the importance of national‐scale climate data sets for evaluating global gridded products. We also recommend caution when using the BETP minimum and maximum monthly air temperature products for long‐term trend analyses.
The study of paleofloods provides important information on past flood frequency and intensity for regions where there is a paucity of records; it therefore extends our knowledge of flood occurrence beyond the historical record. Many paleoflood reconstructions come from the arid dry climate of southwestern USA and from Europe, with few studies being conducted in temperate climates of North America. This study uses sediment cores from oxbow lakes to reconstruct past flood events in a temperate region. Cores extracted from two oxbow lakes along the Désert River in southwestern Quebec, Canada, were analyzed for magnetic susceptibility, loss on ignition, and grain size and were radiocarbon dated (14C). Using a combination of magnetic susceptibility variations, along with changes in grain size and organic material content, five floods were identified within the 220 cm core (1300 years) from the North oxbow lake, and six floods in the 118 cm core (600 years) from the South oxbow lake. This study provides evidence to support the use of oxbow lakes in temperate regions as a proxy of past floods, thus helping us understand hydroclimatic changes at regional scales. Data that span a longer period of time and in different environments are key to increase flood modelling accuracy to improve mitigation strategies under a changing climate.
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