“We didn’t go looking for the Maunder Minimum, it just popped out of the data.”
Hurricane Katrina, Aug 28, 2005
From the UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Shipwrecks, tree rings reveal Caribbean hurricanes in buccaneer era
Records of Spanish shipwrecks combined with tree-ring records show the period 1645 to 1715 had the fewest Caribbean hurricanes since 1500, according to new University of Arizona-led research. The study is the first to use shipwrecks as a proxy for hurricane activity.
The researchers found a 75 percent reduction in the number of Caribbean hurricanes from 1645-1715, a time with little sunspot activity and cool temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere.
“We’re the first to use shipwrecks to study hurricanes in the past,” said lead author Valerie Trouet, an associate professor in the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. “By combining shipwreck data and tree-ring data, we are extending the Caribbean hurricane record back in time and that…