Common Era Time-Transgressive Forcing of Caribbean Water Balance

Authors

Peter J. van Hengstum, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Shawna N. Little, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Richard M. Sullivan, Old Dominion UniversityFollow
Jeffrey P. Donnelly, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Tyler S. Winkler, Texas A&M University
Anne E. Tamalavage, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Patricia A. Beddows, Northwestern University
Patricia L. Fall, University of North Carolina
Jiabi Du, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Kaustubh Thirumalai, University of Arizona
Nancy A. Albury, Coastal Cave Survey, West Branch, IA
Sloan Coats, University of Hawaii

ORCID

0000-0002-7419-1159 (Sullivan)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1038/s43247-025-02905-x

Publication Title

Communications Earth & Environment

Volume

6

Pages

954 (1-9)

Abstract

Tropical North Atlantic sea surface temperatures and low-latitude rainfall covary, but prehistoric subtropical rainfall records are often misaligned. Here, a submarine groundwater discharge record from the northern Bahamas archives regional water balance in the northeastern Atlantic Warm Pool. We compare the reconstruction to the tropical North Atlantic seasonal temperature gradient, which can help inform how northeastern Caribbean rainy seasons are influenced by the Atlantic Warm Pool. A positive water balance in the northern Bahamas aligned with a ~0.9 °C seasonal temperature gradient from 0 to 950 CE, with both covarying on multi-decadal timescales. Aridity began at ~950 CE when a ~2.2 °C seasonal temperature gradient increase likely shortened the wet season. From 1450 to 1850 CE, frequent hurricanes offset aridity in the northeastern Caribbean by elevating rainfall. This record archives time-transgressive changes in hydroclimate forcing, and suggests that projected changes to rainfall seasonality must be considered when assessing tropical water security risk.

Rights

© The Authors 2025.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. 

Data Availability

Article states: "All data is available online at the National Centers for Environmental Information World Data Service for Paleoclimatology (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleo-search/study/39723)."

Original Publication Citation

van Hengstum, P. J., Little, S. N., Sullivan, R. M., Donnelly, J. P., Winkler, T. S., Tamalavage, A. E., Beddows, P. A., Fall, P. L., Du, J., Thirumalai, K., Albury, N. A., & Coats, S. (2025). Common era time-transgressive forcing of Caribbean water balance. Communications Earth & Environment, 6, 1-9, Article 954. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02905-x

Repository Citation

van Hengstum, Peter J.; Little, Shawna N.; Sullivan, Richard M.; Donnelly, Jeffrey P.; Winkler, Tyler S.; Tamalavage, Anne E.; Beddows, Patricia A.; Fall, Patricia L.; Du, Jiabi; Thirumalai, Kaustubh; Albury, Nancy A.; and Coats, Sloan, "Common Era Time-Transgressive Forcing of Caribbean Water Balance" (2025). OES Faculty Publications. 565.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/oeas_fac_pubs/565