The legacy of cyclone Pam: A unique opportunity to build a long term record of cyclone activity in the western tropical Pacific.

热带气旋给南太平洋的岛屿社区带来了破坏。了解气旋频率和强度的驱动因素是该地区气象机构的主要目标。然而，这些组织为了更好地了解气旋及其与区域太平洋气候的关系而必须使用的数据集很短（通常不到50年）。封闭的湖盆就像巨大的雨量计，储存着数千年来过去气候和气旋事件的记录。一个关键的挑战是在这些湖泊沉积物档案中识别气旋事件的指纹。最近摧毁瓦努阿图的5级气旋帕姆提供了一个独特的机会，可以在瓦努阿图埃法特的一个湖泊上记录一次已知的高强度气旋事件。与当地气象和地质灾害机构合作，我们将收集地表沉积物和一个长沉积物的复制核心，以此来a)重建已知的近期气旋沉积物的特征，b)使用这些信息来识别更长的记录中过去的气旋。然后，我们将把气旋记录与厄尔尼诺-南方涛动和南太平洋辐合带发生重大变化的时期内更广泛的区域气候行为联系起来。我们将培训并将获得的知识传播给瓦努阿图各机构，提供有关气旋强迫机制的新数据和见解。

Tropical cyclones bring devastation to Island communities in the South Pacific. Understanding the drivers of Cyclone frequency and magnitude are key aims of meteorological agencies in the region. However, the datasets these organisations have to work with to better understand cyclones and their relationship to the regional pacific climate are short (often less than 50 years). Closed lake basins act like giant rain gauges, storing records of past climate and cyclone events stretching back over thousands of years. A key challenge is to identify the fingerprint of cyclone events within these lake sediment archives. The recent Category 5 cyclone Pam that devastated Vanuatu, provides a unique opportunity to fingerprint a known high magnitude cyclone event from a lake on Efate, Vanuatu. Working with local Meteorological and Geohazard agencies, we will collect surface sediments and a replicate long core of sediment with which to a) reconstruct the characteristics of the known recent cyclone sediments, and b) use that information to identify past cyclones within the longer record. We will then link the cyclone record to wider regional climate behaviour over a period in which major changes in El-Nino Southern Oscillation and the South Pacific Convergence Zone have occurred. We will train and disseminate the knowledge gained back to the Vanuatu agencies, providing new data and insight into cyclone forcing mechanisms.