RESEARCH ARTICLE Intense Hurricane Activity Over the Past 1500 Years 10.1029/2019PA003665 at South Andros Island, The Bahamas Key Points: E. J. Wallace1 , J. P. Donnelly2 , P. J. van Hengstum3,4, C. Wiman5, R. M. Sullivan4,2, • Sediment cores from blue holes on 4 2 6 7 Andros Island record intense T. S. Winkler , N. E. d'Entremont , M. Toomey , and N. Albury hurricane activity over the past 1 millennium and a half Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography, Woods • Multi‐decadal shifts in Intertropical Hole, Massachusetts, USA, 2Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Convergence Zone position and Hole, Massachusetts, USA, 3Department of Marine Sciences, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, Texas, USA, volcanic activity modulate the 4Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA, 5School of Earth and Sustainability, hurricane patterns observed on 6 Andros Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, U.S. Geological Survey, Florence Bascom Geoscience Center, • Hurricane patterns on Andros Reston, Virginia, USA, 7National Museum of The Bahamas, Nassau, The Bahamas match patterns from the northeastern Gulf of Mexico but are anti‐phased with patterns from New Abstract Hurricanes cause substantial loss of life and resources in coastal areas. Unfortunately, England historical hurricane records are too short and incomplete to capture hurricane‐climate interactions on ‐ ‐ ‐ Supporting Information: multi decadal and longer timescales. Coarse grained, hurricane induced deposits preserved in blue holes • Supporting Information S1 in the Caribbean can provide records of past hurricane activity extending back thousands of years. Here we present a high resolution record of intense hurricane events over the past 1500 years from a blue hole on South Andros Island on the Great Bahama Bank. This record is corroborated by shorter Correspondence to: reconstructions from cores collected at two nearby blue holes. The record contains coarse‐grained event E. J. Wallace, [email protected] deposits attributable to known historical hurricane strikes within age uncertainties. Over the past 1500 years, South Andros shows evidence of four active periods of hurricane activity. None of these active intervals occurred in the past 163 years. We suggest that Intertropical Convergence Zone position Citation: Wallace, E. J., Donnelly, J. P., van modulates hurricane activity on the island based on a correlation with Cariaco Basin titanium Hengstum, P. J., Wiman, C., Sullivan, concentrations. An anomalous gap in activity on South Andros Island in the early 13th century R. M., Winkler, T. S., et al. (2019). corresponds to a period of increased volcanism. The patterns of hurricane activity reconstructed from Intense hurricane activity over the ‐ past 1500 years at South Andros Island, South Andros Island closely match those from the northeastern Gulf of Mexico but are anti phased with The Bahamas. Paleoceanography and records from New England. We suggest that either changes in local environmental conditions (e.g., SSTs) Paleoclimatology, 34, 1761–1783. or a northeastward shift in storm tracks can account for the increased activity in the western North https://doi.org/10.1029/2019PA003665 Atlantic when the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern Caribbean are less active. Received 20 MAY 2019 Accepted 3 OCT 2019 Accepted article online 19 OCT 2019 Published online 27 NOV 2019 1. Introduction In modern climate the North Atlantic basin experiences on average 12 named tropical cyclones per year (coast.noaa.gov/hurricanes, 2017). Many of these storms will either form in or pass through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea on their way to the North American East Coast or Gulf Coast, put- ting coastal property and lives at risk. In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria struck many Caribbean islands and locations along the U.S. coastline including Texas, Puerto Rico, and the Florida Keys. These three intense hurricanes killed thousands of people and caused approximately 215 billion USD in damage (Kishore et al., 2018; The hurricane season 2017: a cluster of extreme storms, n.d.). In 2018, Hurricanes Florence and Michael devastated portions of the U.S. coastline causing approximately 50 billion USD in damage and killing hundreds of people (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/, 2019). Just this year (September 1, 2019), Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the northern Bahamas at Category 5 strength with sustained winds at 82 m/s and storm surge estimated at 7 m (www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/hurricane‐dor- ian‐2019, 2019). Despite the destructive nature of storms such as these, little is known about the forces that alter hurricane ©2019. The Authors. ‐ This is an open access article under the activity, particularly on multi decadal to centennial timescales. One challenge is that the current observa- terms of the Creative Commons tional record is short; Atlantic hurricane records maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Attribution License, which permits use, Administration (NOAA) only extend back to 1851 CE and suffer from observation bias (Frappier et al., distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is 2007; Landsea & Franklin, 2013). This relatively short and potentially incomplete dataset prevents a rigorous properly cited. examination of the climate forcing mechanisms that influence storm activity on multi‐decadal to centennial WALLACE ET AL. 1761 Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology 10.1029/2019PA003665 timescales. This deficiency inhibits our ability to resolve hurricane/climate‐interactions during climatic regimes not analogous to the short instrumental (and anthropogenically altered) period. In the last decade, high‐resolution sedimentary records of paleohurricane activity from coastal basins have been developed in an attempt to extend the hurricane record back in time (Denommee et al., 2014; Donnelly et al., 2015; Donnelly & Woodruff, 2007; Gischler et al., 2008; Lane et al., 2011; Lane & Donnelly, 2012; Toomey et al., 2013; van Hengstum et al., 2014). Strong winds, storm surge, currents, and waves generated by hurricanes displace and transport coarse grains such as shell fragments, sand, and gravel into deposi- tional environments where finer grained sediments typically dominate. There, they form distinct layers of coarse material among the silt and/or clay that typically accumulate in these coastal basins, thereby provid- ing a natural geological archive of past hurricane occurrence. All of these reconstructions show periods of elevated hurricane activity interspersed by intervals of relative quiescence. Two records from the western coast of Florida (Mullet Pond (Lane et al., 2011); Spring Creek Pond (Brandon et al., 2013)) show marked variability in the frequency of high intensity events in the Gulf of Mexico. Lane et al. (2011) documented several active periods of intense hurricanes with the most active interval stretching from 2800 to 2300 years BP (years before present with present defined as 1950 CE by con- vention) with almost six intense events/century. Records from the Caribbean also show significant changes in hurricane frequency over the past millennium (Denommee et al., 2014; van Hengstum et al., 2014). A growing number of paleohurricane reconstructions document the regional heterogeneity of past storm activity in the North Atlantic. In particular, records from the U.S. East Coast (Boldt et al., 2010; Donnelly et al., 2015; Mallinson et al., 2011) suggest heightened hurricane activity between 1400 and 1675 CE, while records from the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean (Brandon et al., 2013; Denommee et al., 2014; Lane et al., 2011) suggest relatively low numbers of storms over this same period. These Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean records remain active up until the early 1400s while the U.S. East Coast records are quiet. This regional variability likely stems either from unfavorable local environmental conditions around the U.S. East Coast, from climate driven geographic variability in hurricane tracks and intensity, and/or random variability in hurricane paths. Using NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis data since 1948, Kossin (2017) illustrates the unfavorable local environmental conditions hypothesis by documenting periods in which vertical wind shear and sea surface temperature (SST) values in the Main Development Region (MDR) of the Atlantic were favorable for hurricane growth and survival while regional conditions along the U.S. East Coast were not. Other studies offer support for the second hypothesis suggesting that shifts in the positioning of the North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH) can dramatically change where hurricanes track (Elsner et al., 2000; Liu & Fearn, 1993). In particular, a more southwesterly position of the NASH might result in more straight moving hurricanes that track through the Caribbean Sea and make landfall in the Gulf of Mexico. Finally, the stochastic nature of hurricane landfalls makes it possible that the number of storms impacting a particu- lar location might change from one sampled period to the next even if overall Atlantic hurricane activity remained stationary through time. More paleohurricane records are needed from the Caribbean Sea to investigate the regional coherency of the existing records from the North American coastline or to identify any time transgressive shifts in hurricane activity across records. In addition, of the records