Paleotempestology database for the western North Atlantic basin

Paleotempestology, the study of past tropical cyclone activity, has grown considerably over the past two decades, and there is now a relatively dense network of sites across the Western North Atlantic Basin providing records of past tropical cyclone variability. This paper presents a new database of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Holocene
Main Authors: Oliva, Frank, Viau, Andre E, Peros, Matthew C, Bouchard, Marc
Other Authors: Canada Research Chairs
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959683618782598
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0959683618782598
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0959683618782598
Description
Summary:Paleotempestology, the study of past tropical cyclone activity, has grown considerably over the past two decades, and there is now a relatively dense network of sites across the Western North Atlantic Basin providing records of past tropical cyclone variability. This paper presents a new database of paleotempestological records generated from 61 studies published between 1993 and 2018 for this region. A total of 266 data entries, consisting of the calibrated ages of individual tropical cyclone events and the boundaries of ‘active’ tropical cyclone periods from the present to 8000 cal. yr BP, along with the site names, geographic coordinates, proxy indicator(s) used, materials upon which dating was undertaken, and information about the depositional basin type (e.g. lagoon, mangrove), are included in the database for each site. The database is housed at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) ( https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/21391 ) and is available for free download. This publicly available database will permit a greater number of researchers to work on questions related to past tropical cyclone dynamics and more easily allow studies of long-term spatial-temporal tropical cyclone relationships to be undertaken.