High Resolution Sedimentary Archives of Past Millennium Hurricane Activity in the Bahama Archipelago
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High resolution sedimentary archives of past millennium hurricane activity in the Bahama Archipelago by Elizabeth Jane Wallace B.S., University of Virginia (2015) Submitted to the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY and the WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION September 2020 © Elizabeth Jane Wallace, 2020. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT and WHOI permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Author…………………………………………………………….………….………….………… Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science & Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution July 23, 2020 Certified by…………………………………………………………….………….………….……. Dr. Jeffrey P. Donnelly Senior Scientist in Geology & Geophysics Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Thesis Supervisor Accepted by…………...……………………………………………….………….………….……. Dr. Oliver Jagoutz Associate Professor of Geology Massachusetts Institute of Technology Chair, Joint Committee for Marine Geology & Geophysics 2 High resolution sedimentary archives of past millennium hurricane activity in the Bahama Archipelago by Elizabeth Jane Wallace Submitted to the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences on August 6th, 2020, in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Paleoceanography. Abstract Atlantic hurricanes threaten growing coastal populations along the U.S. coastline and in the Caribbean islands. Unfortunately, little is known about the forces that alter hurricane activity on multi-decadal to centennial timescales. This thesis uses proxy development and proxy-model integration to constrain the spatiotemporal variability in hurricane activity in the Bahama Archipelago over the past millennium. I present annually-resolved archives of storm activity stretching over the past 1000 to 1500 years in sediment cores from blue holes on three islands in the Bahama Archipelago: South Andros Island, Long Island, and Middle Caicos Island. I explore the sensitivity of each site to coarse-grained sediment deposition for modern storms. I find that the local geomorphologic conditions and the angle of approach and size of passing storms play a more important role in inducing coarse-grained sediment transport than storm intensity. All three paleorecords capture multi-decadal and longer periods of elevated hurricane activity over the past millennium. Dramatic differences between these records suggest localized controls on the hurricane patterns observed by each island. Thus, compiling the records from this thesis together more accurately captures regional variations in hurricane strikes. Integrating our new Bahama Archipelago compilation with compiled paleohurricane records from the U.S. coastline indicates shifting patterns of hurricane activity over the past millennium between the Gulf Coast and the Bahama Archipelago/New England. I attribute these shifting storm patterns to changes in local environmental conditions and/or large-scale variations in hurricane tracks. Finally, I address whether variability in hurricane strikes observed in Bahamian paleohurricane records is related to climate or random variability. Using a large suite of synthetic storms run over past millennium climate, I generate 1000 pseudo paleohurricane records containing centennial-scale signal like our proxy reconstructions. However, the signal observed in any individual record of paleohurricane activity from the Bahama Archipelago is driven more by random variability in hurricane tracks than by climate. This thesis lays the groundwork for creating high-resolution paleohurricane records from coastal karst basins and using hurricane models to inform our interpretations of these records. Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Jeffrey P. Donnelly Title: Senior Scientist in Geology & Geophysics 3 4 Acknowledgements I’m extremely grateful to a vast number of people who made this thesis possible. To my advisor, Jeff Donnelly, I could not have asked for a better mentor. Right from the beginning, you handed me some incredible datasets and gave me the space to explore them on my own. Your enthusiasm and encouragement throughout this process has helped me gain confidence in my own ideas. I hope that someday I can be half the scientist and mentor you are! To my labmates, Katie, Jimmy, and Rose: I couldn’t have asked for three more wonderful people by my side over the past 5 years. Your positive affirmation, humor, and advice have helped me innumerably to become the scientist and person I am today. To all the Northeastern interns who worked tirelessly in the lab and the field producing much of the data in this thesis (Emily Griffin, Ethan St. Aubin, Bella Lopez, Phoenix Susak, David Carter, Miranda Cashman, Michelle Chen, Charmille Dizon, Max Besser, Ali LaBella, Dan Litchmore, Abby Llona, Michelle O’Donnell, Patrick Orenstein, Lizzy Soranno, and Mitchell Starr), I could not have completed this research without you. Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and attention to detail. To Sloan Coats, Kerry Emanuel, and Caroline Ummenhofer, thank you for sharing the magical world of climate and hurricane models with me. To Jon Woodruff (aka ‘JFW’): thanks for inspiring me to become a geoscientist. Without reading the Oceanus article about you, I might never have ended up here. To Chris Piecuch, I am ever grateful for your enthusiasm and expertise. To my field family (Nicole D’Entremont, Kelly McKeon, Richard Sullivan, Tyler Winkler, Pete van Hengstum, Charlotte Wiman, Shawna Little, Anne Tamalavage and others), Thanks for your patience, time and time again, teaching me everything I know about coring and using tools in general. I’m sure it was frustrating in the beginning when I didn’t know the difference between a flat-head and phillips-head screwdriver. I’m sorry that I dragged some of you on some crazy disaster adventures, but there’s no one else I’d rather spend hours on a sinking raft with. To Ryan, thank you for your continued love and support through this journey. Your willingness to listen to my rants never ceases to amaze me. Thanks to all my friends for the laughs and good times that helped me retain my sanity these past 5 years. In particular, to Chrissy, for hugs, all the advice, and sharing donuts; to Rachel, for tasty beverages, puns, and plentiful discussion and petting of cats; to Hannah, for Furoshiki shoes; to Jen, for baked goods; to Nathan, for office interruptions, softball, and the Broncos lineup; to Billy, for OGB; to Jeffrey, for feeding me and card games, and to Jake for 4th of July shenanigans. And finally, to my parents, thank you for taking me on all those camping trips to Newfoundland. Clambering over rocks, exploring tidal pools, and singing sea shanties really instilled in me a love for the ocean and the outdoors. 5 This work was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (to E.J.W.), National Science Foundation grant OCE-1356708 (to J.P.D. and P.J.vH.) and the Dalio Explore Foundation. 6 Contents 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………...13 1.1. The short observational record of hurricane activity………………………………..13 1.2. Paleohurricane research in the North Atlantic………………………………………15 1.3. The potential of blue hole basins for paleohurricane records in the tropical Atlantic………………………………………………………………………….17 1.4. Paleohurricane modeling studies……………………………………………………18 2. Intense Hurricane Activity Over the Past 1500 Years at South Andros Island, The Bahamas…………………………………………………………….21 2.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………….22 2.2. Study Site and Methods……………………………………………………………..26 2.2.1. Study Sites………………………………………………………….……..26 2.2.2. Field Methods…………………………………………….……………….27 2.2.3. Sediment Analysis and Age Control………………………………………28 2.2.4. Event threshold, Attribution, and Frequency……………………………...29 2.2.5. Calculating Expected Event Frequency…………………………………...30 2.3. Results…………………………………………………………………………….…31 2.3.1. Event Bed Description…………………………………………………….31 2.3.2. Changing Event Frequency…………………………………………….….32 2.4. Discussion……………………………………………………………………….…..33 2.4.1. Potential Influence of Changing Sea Level……………………………….33 2.4.2. Modern Event Calibration…………………………………………………34 2.4.3. South Andros Site Comparison……………………………………………37 2.4.4. Climatic Forcing of Hurricane Activity on South Andros Island…………38 2.4.5. Comparison to Other High‐Resolution Hurricane Records……………….43 2.5. Conclusions………………………………………………………………………….47 2.6. Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….49 2.7. Figures……………………………………………………………………………….50 2.S. Supplemental material………………………………………………………………59 2.S.1. Alternate active interval threshold………………………………………...59 2.S.2. AM5 age model modifications……………………………………………60 2.S.3. Supplemental figures and tables…………………………………………..60 3. 1000 years of hurricane strikes on Long Island in The Bahamas…………71 3.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………....71 3.2. Methods………………………………………………………………………….….76 3.2.1. Study Sites……………………………………………………………..….76 3.2.2. Field Methods…………………………………………………………..…77 3.2.3. Sediment Analysis and Age Control………………………………………77 3.2.4. Event threshold, attribution, and frequency……………………………….79 3.2.5. Defining active and quiet intervals………………………………….…….80 3.2.6. Estimating storm surge using SLOSH…………………………………….81 3.3. Results……………………………………………………………………………….81