Speleothems: A New Proxy Record of Individual Hurricanes and Tropical Storm events

该奖项是为了奖励一项研究，该研究提供了小冰河时期和中世纪温暖时期过去热带气旋活动的第一个“快照”。为了实现这一目标，研究人员将从牙买加的一个地点收集几个洞穴沉积物。然后，他们将进行210Pb测年，以补充年度带计数，并明确确定每一洞穴层的沉积年份。在世纪后期的三十年里，将对选定的洞穴堆积层进行每周一次的稳定同位素分析（分辨率为20微米，分辨率足以探测单个风暴）。由此产生的热带气旋事件的洞穴沉积物记录将通过与该地点的历史风暴记录进行比较进行校准和评估。最后，研究人员将应用代理方法来检测小冰期和中世纪温暖期的热带风暴和飓风（使用相同的洞穴沉积物），从而确定气候（即海面温度）和风暴频率之间的关系。

This award is for a study to provide the first "snapshot" of past tropical cyclone activity during the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period. To accomplish this goal, the investigators will collect several speleothems from a site in Jamaica. They will then perform 210Pb dating to supplement annual band counting and unambiguously determine the year of deposition of each speleothem layer. Stable isotopic analyses will be conducted at weekly intervals (20 micron resolution, sufficient resolution for detecting individual storms) on the selected speleothem for three decades in the late 20th century. The speleothem record of tropical cyclone events thus generated will be calibrated and assessed by comparison to the historical storm record for that location. Finally, the investigators will apply the proxy method to detect tropical storms and hurricanes during the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period (using the same speleothem), and thus determine the relation between climate (i.e. sea surface temperature) and storm frequency.