Solar Forcing of Drought Frequency in the Maya Lowlands

Abstract

We analyzed lake-sediment cores from the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, to reconstruct the climate history of the region over the past 2600 years. Time series analysis of sediment proxies, which are sensitive to the changing ratio of evaporation to precipitation (oxygen isotopes and gypsum precipitation), reveal a recurrent pattern of drought with a dominant periodicity of 208 years. This cycle is similar to the documented 206-year period in records of cosmogenic nuclide production (carbon-14 and beryllium-10) that is thought to reflect variations in solar activity. We conclude that a significant component of century-scale variability in Yucatan droughts is explained by solar forcing. Furthermore, some of the maxima in the 208-year drought cycle correspond with discontinuities in Maya cultural evolution, suggesting that the Maya were affected by these bicentennial oscillations in precipitation.

Climate and the Maya

“…These are superimposed on a period of generally lower Ti content. Not counting the duration of the more severe multiyear droughts, the number of varves between drought events indicates a spacing of ~40 to 47 years (± 5), a number that agrees remarkably well with the observation of subpeaks at about 50-year intervals in the wellknown Lake Chichancanab sediment density record (Hodell et al, 2001). …”

“…It has been suggested that recurrent patterns of drought played an important role in the complex history of the Maya (Hodell et al, 2001;Gill, 2000). Maya civilization developed in a seasonal desert and was highly dependent on a consistent cycle of rainfall to support agricultural production.…”

Shcal04 Southern Hemisphere Calibration, 0–11.0 Cal Kyr BP

“…This has been observed in 14 C from trees growing in Panama (Westbrook et al, forthcoming) and in Thailand (Hua et al 2002). Evidence for migration of the ITCZ on multi-decadal to millennial time scales has been seen in proxy records from around the globe (Arz et al 1998;Haug et al 2001;Hodell et al 2001;Luckge et al 2001;Marret et al 2001;Maslin and Burns 2000;Wang et al 2004). It is beyond the scope of IntCal to determine the location of the paleo-ITCZ, but those who wish to develop chronologies for records in this region should be aware of this complication.…”

Solar forcing as an important trigger for West Greenland sea-ice variability over the last millennium

“…Solar activity has been shown to influence key components of the climate system, such as temperature, winds, precipitation, ocean circulation and iceberg transport (e.g. Verschuren et al, 2000;Bond et al, 2001;Hodell et al, 2001;Andrews et al, 2003;Jiang et al, 2005;Sejrup et al, 2010;Martin-Puertas et al, 2012;Knudsen et al, 2014;MoffaSanchez et al, 2014a;Jiang et al, 2015). However, only a few studies have investigated the link between variations in sea-ice proxies from the North Atlantic and solar variability on multidecadal to centennial time scales (e.g.…”