@article{HeringStinnesbeckFolmeisteretal.2018, author = {Hering, Fabio and Stinnesbeck, Wolfgang and Folmeister, Jens and Frey, Eberhard and Stinnesbeck, Sarah and Aviles, Jeronimo and Nunez, Eugenio Aceves and Gonzalez, Arturo and Mata, Alejandro Terrazas and Benavente, Martha Elena and Rojas, Carmen and Morlet, Adriana Velazquez and Frank, Norbert and Zell, Patrick and Becker, Julia}, title = {The Chan Hol cave near Tulum (Quintana Roo, Mexico)}, series = {Journal of quaternary science}, volume = {33}, journal = {Journal of quaternary science}, number = {4}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0267-8179}, doi = {10.1002/jqs.3025}, pages = {444 -- 454}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Numerous charcoal accumulations discovered in the submerged Chan Hol cave near Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico, have been C-14-dated revealing ages between 8110 +/- 28 C-14 a BP (9122-8999 cal a BP) and 7177 +/- 27 C-14 a BP (8027-7951 cal a BP). These charcoal concentrations, interpreted here as ancient illumination sites, provide strong evidence that the Chan Hol cave was dry and accessible during that time interval. Humans used the cave for at least 1200 years during the early and middle Holocene, before access was successively interrupted by global sea level rise and flooding of the cave system. Our data thus narrow the gap between an early settlement in the Tulum area reaching from the late Pleistocene (similar to 13 000 a) to middle Holocene (e.g. 7177 C-14 a BP), and the Maya Formative period at approximately 3000 a bp. Yet, no evidence has been presented to date for human settlement during the similar to 4000-year interval between 7000 and 3000 a. This is remarkable as settlement in other areas of south-eastern Mexico (e.g. Chiapas, Tabasco) and in Guatemala was apparently continuous.}, language = {en} } @article{GanguliPaprotnyHasanetal.2020, author = {Ganguli, Poulomi and Paprotny, Dominik and Hasan, Mehedi and G{\"u}ntner, Andreas and Merz, Bruno}, title = {Projected changes in compound flood hazard from riverine and coastal floods in northwestern Europe}, series = {Earth's future}, volume = {8}, journal = {Earth's future}, number = {11}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Hoboken, NJ}, issn = {2328-4277}, doi = {10.1029/2020EF001752}, pages = {19}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Compound flooding in coastal regions, that is, the simultaneous or successive occurrence of high sea levels and high river flows, is expected to increase in a warmer world. To date, however, there is no robust evidence on projected changes in compound flooding for northwestern Europe. We combine projected storm surges and river floods with probabilistic, localized relative sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios to assess the future compound flood hazard over northwestern coastal Europe in the high (RCP8.5) emission scenario. We use high-resolution, dynamically downscaled regional climate models (RCM) to drive a storm surge model and a hydrological model, and analyze the joint occurrence of high coastal water levels and associated river peaks in a multivariate copula-based approach. The RCM-forced multimodel mean reasonably represents the observed spatial pattern of the dependence strength between annual maxima surge and peak river discharge, although substantial discrepancies exist between observed and simulated dependence strength. All models overestimate the dependence strength, possibly due to limitations in model parameterizations. This bias affects compound flood hazard estimates and requires further investigation. While our results suggest decreasing compound flood hazard over the majority of sites by 2050s (2040-2069) compared to the reference period (1985-2005), an increase in projected compound flood hazard is limited to around 34\% of the sites. Further, we show the substantial role of SLR, a driver of compound floods, which has frequently been neglected. Our findings highlight the need to be aware of the limitations of the current generation of Earth system models in simulating coastal compound floods.}, language = {en} }