In the late 13 th century, Kublai Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, launched one of the world's largest armadas of its time in an attempt to conquer Japan. Early narratives described the decimation and dispersal of these fleets by the "Kamikaze" of 1274 CE and 1281 CE, a pair of intense typhoons "divinely" sent to protect Japan from invasion. These historical accounts are prone to exaggeration, and significant questions remain regarding the occurrence and true intensity of these legendary typhoons. To provide independent insight, we present a new 2000 yr sedimentary reconstruction of extreme coastal flooding from a coastal lake near the location of the Mongol invasions. Two marine-sourced flood deposits date to the Kamikaze typhoons and are the events of record in the reconstruction. The complete reconstruction indicates periods of greater flood activity relative to modern beginning ca. 250 CE and extending past the timing of the Kamikaze events to 1600 CE. Comparisons with additional reconstructions are consistent with greater regional typhoon activity during the Mongol invasions due to the preferential steering of storms toward Japan, and driven by greater El Niño activity relative to modern. Results are consistent with the paired Kamikaze typhoons being of significant intensity, and support accounts of them playing an important role in preventing the conquering of Japan by Mongol fleets. The Kamikaze typhoons may therefore serve as a prominent example for how past increases in severe weather associated with changing climate have had significant geopolitical impacts. their employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or further Copyright not claimed on content prepared wholly by U.S. government employees within scope of Notes articles must include the digital object identifier (DOIs) and date of initial publication.
Sustainable marine fishing practices are often hindered by local-level factors in areas with high fishery potentials, such as Odisha, India. Scientific services to fishing, such as Marine Fishery Advisories (MFAs) on the Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) and weather information in the form of Ocean State Forecast (OSF) advisories provided by INCOIS, India, are valuable knowledge products which can help the fishers to overcome several socio-technical constraints (STCs) to effective fishing practices. The present investigation provides a critical analysis of five STCs prevailing in 4 districts (Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur, Puri and Ganjam) of Southern Odisha which can possibly hinder the effective assimilation of the MFAs. These five STCs are the hierarchy of fishers in fishing operations, pathways of transition to new fishing technologies, the adaptive capacity of the fishers to use scientific advisories, the need to achieve economic resilience from fishing as well as the contribution to the preservation of ecosystem sustainability. Stakeholder mapping based on the ground-based observations revealed that inadequate transitions pathways, varying hierarchical positions and low adaptive capacities contributed to higher STCs in general. Sensitivity of the fishers to achieving economic as well as environmental sustainability in their enterprise leads to lower STCs and greater assimilation capacities. The analyses of STCs presented here provide a robust methodology to manage the social cost of carbon which can be useful to achieve sustainability targets with respect to marine fisheries by adopting regular use of MFAs.
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