Abstract
Abstract. On 8 November 2013, category 5 Supertyphoon Haiyan made landfall on the Philippines. During a post-typhoon survey in February 2014, Haiyan-related sand deposition and morphological changes were documented at four severely affected sites with different exposure to the typhoon track and different geological and geomorphological settings. Onshore sand sheets reaching 100–250 m inland are restricted to coastal areas with significant inundation due to amplification of surge levels in embayments or due to accompanying long-wave phenomena at the most exposed coastlines of Leyte and Samar. However, localized washover fans with a storm-typical laminated stratigraphy occurred even along coasts with limited inundation due to waves overtopping or breaching coastal barriers. On a recent reef platform off Negros in the Visayan Sea, storm waves entrained coral rubble from the reef slope and formed an intertidal coral ridge several hundreds of metres long when breaking at the reef edge. As these sediments and landforms were generated by one of the strongest storms ever recorded, they not only provide a recent reference for typhoon signatures that can be used for palaeotempestological and palaeotsunami studies in the region but might also increase the general spectrum of possible cyclone deposits. Although a rather atypical example for storm deposition due to the influence of infra-gravity waves, it nevertheless provides a valuable reference for an extreme case that should be considered when discriminating between storm and tsunami deposits in general. Even for sites with low topography and high inundation levels during Supertyphoon Haiyan, the landward extent of the documented sand sheets seems significantly smaller than typical sand sheets of large tsunamis. This criterion may potentially be used to distinguish both types of events.
Highlights
On 8 November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan made landfall on the Philippines reaching category 5 on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale
– according to surge levels – thickest onshore deposits are to be expected in Tacloban and directly south of it, we report on the storm impact on the nearshore area of Tolosa’s beach-ridge plain (TOL, Fig. 1b), since the northern areas are more densely populated and unaltered typhoon sediments were hard to find 3 months after Haiyan
The deposits of Typhoon Haiyan are strongly influenced by local factors causing a wide variety of site-specific sedimentary and morphological characteristics
Summary
On 8 November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan (local name: Yolanda) made landfall on the Philippines reaching category 5 on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale. Its destructive power resulted from exceptional surface winds reaching sustained velocities of up to 315 km h−1 (1 min averaged data), gusting even up to 380 km h−1, in combination with massive storm surge flooding with water levels up to 9 m above tide level (IRIDeS, 2014). Based on recorded wind speeds and core pressure, Haiyan was an exceptional event for the Philippines but one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded. Against the background of the ongoing controversial discussion on the influence of climate change on cyclone frequencies and magnitudes (Knutson et al, 2010; Pun et al, 2013), Typhoon Haiyan could be both an exceptional low-frequency event and/or a precursor of a new normality
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