ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF PALEOTEMPESTOLOGY

The recent increase in intense storm(tropical cyclone) activities and huge storm losses has attracted great interests and triggered a hot debate over whether it is linked to global warming or only a part of the large interdecadal variability. Due to the short instrumental record, it's difficult for us to understand the complex processes and mechanism of storm generation and development. Therefore, in order to extend the time span of storm activity records, a new young science-Paleotempestology emerged in the early 1990s. In the past more than 10 years,significant progress has been achieved in both methodology and findings in Paleotempestology. The methodology has been evolving from a single proxy to multi-proxy techniques by integrating various proxies of geologic evidence, microfossils, historical documents and geochemistry to reconstruct the storm history. Talking about findings, the history of storm records has been greatly extended and this provides a sufficient condition for the study of storm periodicity and long-term trends. As to the heated debate on the link between the increased storm and global warming, a new study suggests that the storm activities do not just passively respond to climate change, and storm activities may be closely tied to global temperature patterns through feedbacks-the storm activities may accelerate the global warming, and as a feedback, global warming will increase storms. As to the future research of Paleotempestology, we should improve the basic theory and methods to explore new proxies in Paleotempestology, and further extend the time span of storm activity records and integrate various proxies to establish high-resolution storm records to understand the process and mechanism of storm generation and development so as to provide a scientific basis for storm forecasting.