Northwestern Pacific tropical cyclone activity enhanced by increased Asian dust emissions during the Little Ice Age

Abstract

Instrumental records reveal that intense tropical cyclone (TC) activity varies with tropical sea surface temperature (SST) on annual-decadal scales. Drivers of intense TC activity at the centennial-millennial scale are less clear, due to the sparseness of pre-observational reconstructions. Here, we present a new 2 kyr continuous activity record of intense TCs from offshore eastern China. Our reconstruction indicates that this site witnessed enhanced TC activity during relatively warm periods, with a widespread increase in TC activity during the later part of the Little Ice Age. This latter observation reveals that enhanced TC activity was synchronized with increased Asian dust emissions during the Little Ice Age. TC activity was also lower in the late Roman Warm Period, when SST was higher but Asian dust emissions were lower than in the early phase. Such patterns suggest a centennial-millennial link between TC climatology and a combination of SST changes and Asian dust levels.