Climatological influences on major storm events during the last millennium along the Atlantic coast of France

Pierre Pouzet,Mohamed Maanan

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-69069-w

Abstract

This paper reviews the climatological influences on major past storm events in the North-east Atlantic. Analyses are based on a millenary record of sedimentological and historical impacts affecting coastal societies. The effects of 20 past storms have been found from sedimentary deposits from the last 1,000 years. Historical archives confirmed these events. This paper highlights five major storms that have markedly impacted coastal populations. They date back to 1351–1352, 1469, 1645, 1711 and 1751 AD. The 1351–1352 AD event is defined as a millennium storm that was “likely apocalyptical”, provoking serious damage and long lasting floods on much of the European coast. Major storm impacts have mostly been recorded during positive North Atlantic Oscillation phases. Four decreasing temperature phases are concomitant with 1300–1355, 1420–1470, 1560–1590 and 1690–1715 AD periods, during which much of the northern Atlantic coast of France underwent severe storm damages.

Highlights

Reconstructing extreme storm history is a methodological challenge of importance in order to understand climate change[1,2]
Back barrier lagoons, which are separated from the sea by a sandy barrier, are relevant environments to detect past StE15,21
The Petite Mer de Gâvres (PMG) and the Traicts du Croisic (TDC) lagoons were selected along the French Atlantic coast as they are environments with a constant natural evolution and with no human impacts[22]

Summary

Introduction

Reconstructing extreme storm history is a methodological challenge of importance in order to understand climate change[1,2]. Historical and sedimentological data are used to understand centuries-old historical storm trends, extending this analysis’s timescale They give us valuable information on past storm dynamics, including their relation with various climatological mechanisms, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) or temperature variation[5,6,7]. This paper has three main objectives: (1) to detect impacting StE in the last 1,000 years thanks to a combination of sedimentological data and historical documents; (2) to use this crossing to spatialise damage and assess past trajectories of the most disturbing storms that crossed the area; and (3) to compare storm chronologies with NAO and temperature variations to consider their possible climatological influences

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Results

Conclusion