Historically unprecedented Northern Gulf of Mexico hurricane activity from 650 to 1250 CE

Abstract

Hurricane Michael (2018) was the first Category 5 storm on record to make landfall on the Florida panhandle since at least 1851 CE (Common Era), and it resulted in the loss of 59 lives and $25 billion in damages across the southeastern U.S. This event placed a spotlight on recent intense (exceeding Category 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) hurricane landfalls, prompting questions about the natural range in variability of hurricane activity that the instrumental record is too short to address. Of particular interest is determining whether the frequency of recent intense hurricane landfalls in the northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is within or outside the natural range of intense hurricane activity prior to 1851 CE. In this study, we identify intense hurricane landfalls in northwest Florida during the past 2000 years based on coarse anomaly event detection from two coastal lacustrine sediment archives. We identified a historically unprecedented period of heightened storm activity common to four Florida panhandle localities from 650 to 1250 CE and a shift to a relatively quiescent storm climate in the GOM spanning the past six centuries. Our study provides long-term context for events like Hurricane Michael and suggests that the observational period 1851 CE to present may underrepresent the natural range in landfalling hurricane activity.

1,050 years of Hurricane Strikes on Long Island in The Bahamas

“… Compilations of paleohurricane records from (a) The Bahamas (blue) including all the records shown in Figure 6, (b) the Northeast Gulf Coast for intense events (red) including records from Mullet Pond, FL (Lane et al., 2011), Spring Creek Pond (Brandon et al., 2013), and Basin Bayou (Rodysill et al., 2020) and (c) New England (green) including records from Salt Pond, MA (Donnelly et al., 2015) and Mattapoisett Marsh (Boldt et al., 2010). The shaded confidence intervals are calculated from the spread in each of the contributing records.…”

“…It is useful to further contextualize this Bahamas regional compilation through comparison to compilations of other similarly resolved records from along the U.S. coastline (Figures 7b and 7c). We generated compilations for New England using two records from Massachusetts and for the Northeast Gulf Coast including records from Apalachee Bay (Brandon et al., 2013; Lane et al., 2011; Rodysill et al., 2020) and Choctawhatchee Bay (Rodysill et al., 2020) in northwest Florida. In our Northeast Gulf Coast compilation, we created a high threshold compilation including only intense events (Category 3 and above).…”

“…Our synthesis of these different U.S. coastal compilations gives us information on potential century-scale shifts in the predominance of certain storm populations in the North Atlantic (Figure 7d). (Brandon et al, 2013), and Basin Bayou (Rodysill et al, 2020) and (c) New England (green) including records from Salt Pond, MA (Donnelly et al, 2015) and Mattapoisett Marsh (Boldt et al, 2010). The shaded confidence intervals are calculated from the spread in each of the contributing records.…”

Centennial‐Scale Shifts in Storm Frequency Captured in Paleohurricane Records From The Bahamas Arise Predominantly From Random Variability

“…If this is the case, we might expect a stronger climate signal in paleohurricane records from these regions. In general, paleohurricane reconstructions from the U.S. East Coast (Boldt et al., 2010; Donnelly et al., 2015) and Gulf Coast (Brandon et al., 2013; Bregy et al., 2018; Lane et al., 2011; Rodysill et al., 2020) tend to have more reproducible patterns in centennial‐scale variability from site to site than records from The Bahamas. Future work simulating past millennium storms for North American and Caribbean coastlines is needed to determine if this sampling bias extends to subtropical paleohurricane sites.…”

High resolution sedimentary archives of past millennium hurricane activity in the Bahama Archipelago

“…Our methods for creating these compilations and the criteria for including records are detailed in Section 3.S.4. We generated compilations for New England using two records from Massachusetts (Boldt et al, 2010;Donnelly et al, 2015) and for northwest Florida including records from Apalachee Bay (Lane et al, 2011;Brandon et al, 2013;Rodysill et al) and Choctawhatchee Bay (Rodysill et al). In our Florida compilations, we created a High Threshold compilation including only intense events (Category 3 and above) and a Low…”