Tropical Cyclones Within the Sedimentary Record: Analyzing Overwash Deposition from Event to Millennial Timescales
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Tropical Cyclones within the Sedimentary Record: Analyzing Overwash Deposition from Event to Millennial Timescales by Jonathan D. Woodruff B.S. Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts University, 1996 B.S. Environmental Studies, Tufts University, 1996 M.S. Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, MIT/WHOI Joint Program, 1999 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geology and Geophysics at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY and the WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION FEBRUARY 2009 ©2009 Jonathan D. Woodruff. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants 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 or known hereafter created. Signature of Author: ______________________________________________________ Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution December 16, 2008 Certified by: _____________________________________________________________ Jeffrey P. Donnelly Associate Scientist, Department of Geology and Geophysics Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Thesis Supervisor Accepted by: ____________________________________________________________ Bradford H. Hager Co-Chairman, Joint Committee for Geology and Geophysics Massachusetts Institute of Technology Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 2 Tropical Cyclones within the Sedimentary Record: Analyzing Overwash Deposition from Event to Millennial Timescales by Jonathan D. Woodruff Submitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography on December 16, 2008 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geology and Geophysics ABSTRACT Tropical cyclone activity over the last 5000 years is investigated using overwash sediments from coastal lagoons on the islands of Vieques, Puerto Rico and Koshikijima, Japan. A simple sediment transport model can reproduce the landward fining deposits observed at Vieques, and reveals that although the record exhibits centennial-to- millennial changes in hurricane overwash frequency, the magnitude of these flooding events has remained relatively constant. Stochastic simulations of hurricane overwash show that breaks in activity at Vieques are extremely long and unlikely to occur under the current hurricane climatology and the present barrier morphology. Periods of less frequent hurricane deposition at Vieques are contemporaneous with intervals of increased El Niño occurrences and reduced precipitation in West Africa, suggesting a dominant influence by these two climatic phenomena. Hiatuses in overwash activity between 3600- to-2500 and 1000-500 years ago are longer than what is generated by overwash simulations under a constant El Niño-like state, indicating that mechanisms in addition to variability in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation are required to completely produce the overwash variability at Vieques. Periods of low overwash activity at Vieques are concurrent with increased overwash activity at Kamikoshiki and may indicate a correspondence between tropical cyclone activity in the western Northern Atlantic and the western North Pacific. Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey P. Donnelly Title: Associate Scientist, Department of Geology and Geophysics Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 3 Acknowledgements Above all, I would like to thank my advisor Jeff Donnelly. I have been extremely fortunate to have had Jeff as an advisor, and am indebted to him for his unwavering support over the course of my dissertation, both professionally and personally. I admire Jeff greatly for his scientific enthusiasm, insight, and generosity, and will always consider him a strong role model throughout my academic career. I am also grateful to Rocky Geyer, whose mentorship extends back over 14 years to when he first took me on as a Summer Student Fellow at WHOI. Rocky’s help and guidance since I arrived in Woods Hole has been invaluable and I sincerely appreciate everything he has done for me. I would also like to thank David Mohrig who had been generous with both his ideas and expertise, especially with respect to the inverse modeling work described in Chapter 3, which builds upon previously unpublished research of his. Most of Chapter 4 would not have been possible without the help of Kerry Emanuel who has been extremely gracious both with his time, knowledge, and resources. I also thank Delia Oppo whose door was always open to me, and Rob Evans for agreeing to act as the chair of my defense. In addition to my committee, I would like to thank both the past and present members of the Coastal Systems Group at WHOI who I have enjoyed collaborating with immensely: Andrew Ashton, Katie Boldt, Ilya Buynevich, Zion Klos, Liviu Giosan, Maya Gomes, Phil Lane, Dana MacDonald, Paige Newby, Camilo Ponton, Rebecca Sobell, Michael Toomey, and Al Uchupi. This thesis has also benefitted through informative discussions with Konrad Hughen, Gail Kineke, Dan Lizarralde, Britt Raubenheimer, Ken Sims, Casey Saenger, and Andy Solow. Erin Bryant, Pat Donnelly, Elyse Scileppi and Jessica Tierney all provided assistance during the Caribbean field work. I am also grateful for the help from both the MIT/WHOI Education Office including Valerie Caron, John Farrington, Marsha Gomes, Judy McDowell, Jim Price, Julia Westwater, and Jim Yoder, and the Geology and Geophysics Department’s administrative staff - Maryanne Ferreira, Pam Foster, Kelly Servant and Lynnette Stellrecht. I am particularly thankful to Masako Okusu, Akiko Okusu, Rick Woodruff and Jane Woodruff for their loving support, as well as their participation in the Koshikijima field work presented in Chapter 5. This particular study was truly a family effort. Finally, my deepest thanks to my wife Akiko Okusu. Her constant encouragement, patience, and faith in me has been inspiring, and allowed me to accomplish things I never thought possible for myself. This work is dedicated to her. Funding for this research was provided by the Earth Systems History Program of the National Science Foundation, the Risk Prediction Initiative, the National Geographic Society, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowed Fund for Innovative Research, and graduate student fellowships from the Coastal Ocean Institute at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the United States Geological Survey. 4 Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………… 3 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………....................... 4 Chapter 1. Introduction .…..…………………………………………………………6 Chapter 2. Intense hurricane activity over the past 5,000 years controlled by El Niño and the West African monsoon……..………………………….12 Chapter 3. Reconstructing relative flooding intensities responsible for hurricane- Induced deposits from Laguna Playa Grande, Vieques, Puerto Rico…..17 Chapter 4. Assessing sediment records of paleohurricane activity using modeled hurricane climatology…………………………………………………...22 Chapter 5. Exploring typhoon variability over the mid-to-late Holocene: evidence of extreme coastal flooding from Kamikoshiki, Japan……….35 Appendices Appendix A1. Supplemental information for Chapter 2 ……………………………….78 Appendix A2. Supplemental information for Chapter 3 ……………………………….81 Appendix A3. Supplemental XRF Results from Vieques, Puerto Rico..……………….98 Appendix A4. Permission letters from co-authors ……………………………………102 5 Introduction Tropical cyclones are among the most hazardous natural disasters on earth, responsible for substantial losses in both human life and economic resources (Pielke et al., 2008). Inter-annual to multi-decadal variability in tropical cyclone activity has been attributed to a number of climatic forcings (e.g. Bove et al., 1998; Elsner et al., 2000; Emanuel, 2005; Goldenberg et al., 2001; Gray, 1984; Landsea et al., 1999); however, the relatively short duration of the modern instrumental record precludes the direct analysis of processes controlling activity on centennial to millennial timescales. Natural archives of tropical cyclones preserved within the geologic record extend well beyond instrumental observations and can identify how tropical cyclone activity has responded to past shifts in climate (Frappier et al., 2007; Nott, 2004). In particular, previous research has demonstrated that storm-induced sand deposits found within backbarrier environments serve as an effective recorder of tropical cyclone occurrences (e.g. Ball et al., 1967; Donnelly et al., 2001a; Donnelly et al., 2001b; Emery, 1969; Goman et al., 2005; High, 1969; Liu and Fearn, 1993, 2000; Scileppi and Donnelly, 2007; van de Plassche et al., 2004). To date there are relatively few sedimentary reconstructions of tropical cyclone activity which extend back more then a few centuries, and the longer-term records of overwash are still primarily restricted to the western North Atlantic. In addition, the transport processes which deposit overwash layers are still poorly understood, making it difficult for sedimentologists to effectively interpret paleo- deposits, especially with respect to both quantifying the magnitude of prehistoric flood 6 events, and evaluating potential changes in overwash sensitivity resulting from evolving coastal morphology. Finally, the stochastic nature of hurricane strikes to a few sites requires consideration when assessing the significance of trends observed within these paleo-storm reconstructions. Given the importance