Abstract. Severe storms generate sedimentary structures and textures that can be identified in the geologic record. A companion paper [PSUCLIM, this issue] describes the genesis and distribution of both winter storms and hurricanes and their sensitivity to climatic and geographic variables. In this paper, a total of 90 storm deposits are compared to GENESIS climate simulations in order to examine storm activity from the Permian to the Cretaceous and to evaluate the ability of the model to predict storms in ancient environments. Approximately 70% of the observed deposits are predicted by the models. The majority of the missed deposits are associated with recognizable errors. If these specific sources of error are eliminated, the model predicts over 90% of observed deposits. This degree of accuracy allows the assignment of generative processes to individual deposits; however, causative differences between hummocky cross stratification and tempestite type deposits are not distinguishable. The distribution of severe storms through Earth history varies as a function of both continental geometry and climate. Elevated atmospheric CO2 appears to homogenize the latitudinal distribution of storm deposits by expanding the area of hurricane genesis. Geography exerted the dominant control on winter storm distribution and was responsible for a shift in the concentration of winter storm' deposits from the Southern Hemisphere in the Early Permian to the Northern Hemisphere in the mid-Cretaceous. IntroductionInstead, the objective must be to utilize storm predictio Global climate simulations, by providing physically based considerations of climatic and geographic controls, may provide a powerful means for evaluating severe storm activity through geologic time. In the first paper, [PSUCLIM, this issue (hereinafter referred to as PSUCLIM 1)] results describing the sensitivity of severe storm activity (both hurricanes and winter storms) to changes in geography, topography, CO2, solar variations, and ocean heat transport are presented. Here we evaluate storm activity in the past using climate model simulations for seven time periods from the Early Permian (-281 Ma) to the mid-Cretaceous (-100 Ma). This interval spans from an icehouse period, during which extensive continental ice was present to a greenhouse period, during which continental ice is believed to have been absent [Frakes et al, 1992]. In this work, we address three main issues.First, we assess how well model predictions of storm activity agree with the temporal and geographic distribution of sedimentary structures attributed by previous workers to storm activity. We anticipate good agreement between the model simulations and the geologic record but are cognizant that geologic interpretation may be flawed and that model accuracy is affected both by the limitations of general circulation models (GCMs) in general and by the reliability of specified boundary conditions. Second, by examining the distribution of severe storms relative to generative processes, we determine whet...
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