Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © Elsevier B.V., 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Quaternary Science Reviews 28 (2009): 1774-1785, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.02.005.
Description:
Sediment cores from two coastal lakes located on the island of Kamikoshiki in
southwestern Japan (Lake Namakoike and Lake Kaiike) provide evidence for the
response of a backbarrier beach system to episodic coastal inundation over the last 6400
years. Subbottom seismic surveys exhibit acoustically laminated, parallel to subparallel
seismic reflectors, intermittently truncated by erosional unconformities. Sediment cores
collected from targeted depocenters in both lakes contain finely laminated organic mud
interbedded with coarse grained units, with depths of coarse deposits concurrent with
prominent seismic reflectors. The timing of the youngest deposit at Kamikoshiki
correlates to the most recently documented breach in the barrier during a typhoon in 1951
AD. Assuming this modern deposit provides an analog for identifying past events, paleo
typhoons may be reconstructed from layers exhibiting an increase in grain-size, a break in
fine-scale stratigraphy, and elevated Sr concentrations.
Periods of barrier breaching are concurrent with an increase in El Niño frequency,
indicating that the El Niño/Southern Oscillation has potentially played a key role in
governing typhoon variability during the mid-to-late Holocene. An inverse correlation is
observed between tropical cyclone reconstructions from the western North Atlantic and
the Kamikoshiki site, which may indicate an oscillating pattern in tropical cyclone
activity between the western Northern Atlantic and the western North Pacific, or at least
between the western Northern Atlantic and regions encompassing southern Japan. The
two kamikaze typhoons which contributed to the failed Mongol invasions of Japan in
1274 AD and 1281 AD occur during a period with more frequent marine-sourced
deposition at the site, suggesting the events took place during a period of greater regional
typhoon activity.
Description:
The study was supported by the Coastal Ocean Institute (COI) and the Ocean and Climate Change
Institute (OCCI) at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
