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Aerial photo of Dauphin Island in Alabama following Hurricane Katrina
An aerial photo of Dauphin Island in Alabama following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Storm surge and waves over-washed the island, destroying homes and washing sediment and debris off the island.
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Recent research by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (grants OCE 09-03020 and OCE 13-56708), has found evidence of intense hurricanes--possibly more powerful than any storms New England has experienced in recorded history--frequently pounding the region during the first millennium, from the peak of the Roman Empire to the height of the Middle Ages. These findings could have implications for understanding the intensity and frequency of hurricanes the U.S. Northeast may experience in the future.
WHOI scientists examined sediment deposits from Salt Pond near Falmouth on Cape Cod. The pond is separated from the ocean by a 1.3- to 1.8-meter-high (4.3 to 5.9-feet) sand barrier. Over hundreds of years, strong hurricanes have deposited sediment over the barrier and into the pond, where it has remained undisturbed. They extracted 9-meter-deep (30 feet) sediment cores which were then analyzed in the lab.
Similar to reading a tree ring to tell the age of a tree and the climate conditions that existed in a given year, scientists can read a sediment core to determine when intense hurricanes occurred. They found evidence of 32 prehistoric hurricanes, along with the remains of three documented storms that occurred in 1991, 1675 and 1635.
"We hope this study broadens our sense of what is possible and what we should expect in a warmer climate," said Jeff Donnelly, a WHOI scientist and lead author of a paper on the results of the study. "We may need to begin planning for a category 3 hurricane landfall every decade or so rather than every 100 or 200 years. The risk may be much greater than we anticipated."
To read more, see NSF press release 15-012, Monster hurricanes struck U.S. Northeast during prehistoric periods of ocean warming. (Date image taken: May 2005; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: Sept. 30, 2015)
Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
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