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Abstract Tropical cyclone (TC) impacts along the western Atlantic and Caribbean margin are not spatially uniform. Proxy based reconstructions of Common Era TC activity highlight this non‐uniform distribution at centennial‐millennial timescales. However, the sparse geographic scope of these reconstructions impedes our assessment of TC landfalls across broader spatial domains. This work presents a compilation of new and existing TC reconstructions from the Yucatan Peninsula for comparison with a contemporaneous compilation from New England, showing that these regions occupy distal nodes of a low‐frequency TC dipole. Increased Yucatan (New England) storminess is closely linked to intervals of Northern Hemisphere warming (cooling) and the expansion (contraction) of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, suggesting that secular shifts in the mean climate state mediate dipole orientation. 

Abstract Analyses of two high-resolution reanalysis products show that high values of hurricane potential intensity (PI) are becoming more frequent and covering a larger area of the Atlantic, which is consistent with the lengthening of the tropical cyclone season previously reported. These changes are especially pronounced during the early months of the storm season (May–July) in subtropical latitudes. The western subtropical Atlantic features increases in mean PI as well as the areal coverage and frequency of high PI throughout the storm season; the length of the season with high PI has grown since 1980. The number of days with low vertical wind shear increases in the tropical North Atlantic during the early and middle months of the storm season, but trends are mixed and generally insignificant elsewhere. A thermodynamic parameter measuring the ratio of midlevel entropy deficits to the strength of surface fluxes that work to eliminate them is sensitive to the choice of the pressure level(s) used to calculate its value in the boundary layer, as well as to subtle differences in temperature and humidity values near the surface in different reanalysis datasets, leading to divergent results in metrics like the ventilation index that depend on its value. Projections from a high-resolution simulation of the remainder of the twenty-first century show that the number of days with high PI is likely to continue increasing in the North Atlantic basin, with trends especially strong in the western subtropical Atlantic during the early and late months of the season. 

Abstract The collapse of the Maya civilization in the late 1st/early 2nd millennium CE has been attributed to multiple internal and external causes including overpopulation, increased warfare, and environmental deterioration. Yet the role hurricanes may have played in the fracturing of Maya socio-political networks, site abandonment, and cultural reconfiguration remains unexplored. Here we present a 2200 yearlong hurricane record developed from sediment recovered from a flooded cenote on the northeastern Yucatan peninsula. The sediment archive contains fine grain autogenic carbonate interspersed with anomalous deposits of coarse carbonate material that we interpret as evidence of local hurricane activity. This interpretation is supported by the correlation between the multi-decadal distribution of recent coarse beds and the temporal distribution of modern regional landfalling storms. In total, this record allows us to reconstruct the variable hurricane conditions impacting the northern lowland Maya during the Late Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic Periods. Strikingly, persistent above-average hurricane frequency between ~ 700 and 1450 CE encompasses the Maya Terminal Classic Phase, the declines of Chichén Itza, Cobá, and subsequent rise and fall of the Mayapán Confederacy. This suggests that hurricanes may have posed an additional environmental stressor necessary of consideration when examining the Postclassic transformation of northern Maya polities. 

Abstract The tracks, intensities, and other properties of tropical cyclones downscaled from three models’ simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) are analyzed and compared to those of storms downscaled from simulations of the present climate. Globally, the mean maximum intensity of storms generated from each model is lower at LGM, as is the fraction of all storms that reach intensities of category 4 or higher on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale. The median day of the storm season shifts earlier by an average of one week in all three models in both hemispheres. Two of the three models’ LGM simulations feature a reduction in storm count and global power dissipation index compared to the current climate, but a third shows no significant difference between the two climates. Although each model is forced by the same global changes, differences in the way sea surface temperatures and other large-scale environmental conditions respond in the North Atlantic impart significant differences in the climatology at LGM between models. Our results from the cold LGM provide a novel opportunity to assess how tropical cyclones respond to climate changes.