An annually resolved 5700-year storm archive reveals drivers of Caribbean cyclone frequency.

ABSTRACT: Predictions of tropical cyclone (TC) frequencies are hampered by insufficient knowledge of their natural variability in the past. A 30-m-long sediment core from the Great Blue Hole, a marine sinkhole offshore Belize, provides the longest available, continuous, and annually resolved TC-frequency record. This record expands our understanding, derived from instrumental monitoring (73 years), historical documentations (173 years), and paleotempestological records (2000 years), to the past 5700 years. A total of 694 event layers were identified. They display a distinct regional trend of increasing storminess in the southwestern Caribbean, which follows an orbitally driven shift in the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Superimposed short-term variations match Holocene climate intervals and origina

SUBMITTER: Schmitt D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11908496 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature