Blue Hole Sediment Study Reveals 5,700 Years of Hurricane Activity

Sediment samples taken from Belize’s Great Blue Hole have helped scientists determine that hurricanes and storms have steadily increased in the region for thousands of years. According to an international research team led by Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, storms leave traces on the ocean floor that linger long after they have passed. The team drilled a 30-meter sediment core from within the Blue Hole and found that sediment had been accumulating for approximately 20,000 years. Analyzing the core, the team determined that the layered sediments at the bottom of the Great Blue Hole serve as an archive for extreme weather events of the past 5,700 years, including tropical storms and hurricanes. The research team identified and precisely dated a total of 574 storm events over the past 5,700 years, offering unprecedented insights into climate fluctuations and hurricane cycles in the southwestern Caribbean. Instrumental data and human records available to date have only covered the past 175 years. The researchers determined that storm activity has increased considerably and say that this is a direct result of climate change. Professor Eberhard Gischler, head of the Biosedimentology Research Group at Goethe University, said that their research quote, “suggests that some 45 tropical storms and hurricanes could pass over this region in our century alone. This would far exceed the natural variability of the past millennia,” end of quote.