Coupling instrumental and geological records of sea-level change : evidence from southern New England of an increase in the rate of sea-level rise in the late 19th century

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 31 (2004): L05203, doi:10.1029/2003GL018933.We construct a high-resolution relative sea-level record for the past 700 years by dating basal salt-marsh peat samples above a glacial erratic in an eastern Connecticut salt marsh, to test whether or not the apparent recent acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise (SLR) is coeval with climate warming. The data reveal an average SLR rate of 1.0 ± 0.2 mm/year from about 1300 to 1850 A.D. Coupling of the regional tide-gauge data (1856 to present) with this marsh-based record indicates that the nearly three-fold increase in the regional rate of SLR to modern levels likely occurred in the later half of the 19th century. Thus the timing of the observed SLR rate increase is coincident with the onset of climate warming, indicating a possible link between historic SLR increases and recent temperature increases.A Research Initiative Grant from the NOSAMS facility at WHOI funded the C-14 analysis. The Postdoctoral Scholar Program at WHOI (with funding provided by the U.S.G.S.), The John E. and Anne W. Sawyer Endowed Fund, and The J. Lamar Worzel Assistant Scientist Fund provided support to J. Donnelly

Sedimentary evidence of hurricane strikes in western Long Island, New York

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 8 (2007): Q06011, doi:10.1029/2006GC001463.Evidence of historical landfalling hurricanes and prehistoric storms has been recovered from backbarrier environments in the New York City area. Overwash deposits correlate with landfalls of the most intense documented hurricanes in the area, including the hurricanes of 1893, 1821, 1788, and 1693 A.D. There is little evidence of intense hurricane landfalls in the region for several hundred years prior to the late 17th century A.D. The apparent increase in intense hurricane landfalls around 300 years ago occurs during the latter half of the Little Ice Age, a time of lower tropical sea surface temperatures. Multiple washovers laid down between ~2200 and 900 cal yr B.P. suggest an interval of frequent intense hurricane landfalls in the region. Our results provide preliminary evidence that fluctuations in intense hurricane landfall in the northeastern United States were roughly synchronous with hurricane landfall fluctuations observed for the Caribbean and Gulf Coast, suggesting North Atlantic–wide changes in hurricane activity.Grants from the National Science Foundation (EAR 0519118), Risk Prediction Initiative at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, and the Coastal Ocean Institute of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution supported this research