Paleotempestology

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of paleotempestology, an emerging field of science that studies past tropical cyclone activity by means of geological or archival techniques. Overwash sand layers preserved in the sediments of coastal lakes and marshes can provide proxy evidence of paleohurricane landfalls. Other promising proxies and archives include storm-generated beach ridges, marine microfossils, pollen, phytoliths, and stable isotopic signals recorded in tree rings, speleothems, and reef corals. Historical documentary evidence of hurricane and typhoon activities during the past several centuries can be obtained from newspapers, plantation diaries, and early instrumental records in the US mariners' logbooks in British archives, colonial records in Spanish archives, and official histories, unofficial literature, and local gazettes in China. Paleotempestological studies from the United States and Caribbean coasts and China have revealed a pattern of millennial- to century-scale variations in tropical cyclone activities that can be related to global and regional climate changes during the lateHolocene.