Hurricane belt

The hurricane belt is an area in the Atlantic Ocean, including the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, which is prone to hurricanes during the Atlantic hurricane season. The only places in the Caribbean that are not in the hurricane belt are the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, Bonaire, Curacao, Aruba, Panama, and the islands off of Venezuela.

According to the Azores High hypothesis by Kam-biu Liu, an anti-phase pattern is expected to exist between the Gulf of Mexico coast and the Atlantic coast. During the quiescent periods (3000–1400 BC, and 1000 AD to present), a more northeasterly position of the Azores High would result in more hurricanes being steered towards the Atlantic coast. During the hyperactive period (1400 BC to 1000 AD), more hurricanes were steered towards the Gulf coast as the Azores High was shifted to a more southwesterly position near the Caribbean.cite conference |first=Kam-biu |last=Liu |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Millennial-scale variability in catastrophic hurricane landfalls along the Gulf of Mexico coast |conference=23d Conf. on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology |pages= |publisher=Amer. Meteor. Soc. |date=1999 |location=Dallas, TX |url= |pages=374–377 |id= ] cite journal |last=Liu |first=Kam-biu |authorlink= |coauthors=Fearn, Miriam L. |year=2000 |month= |title=Reconstruction of Prehistoric Landfall Frequencies of Catastrophic Hurricanes in Northwestern Florida from Lake Sediment Records |journal=Quaternary Research |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=238–245 |doi=10.1006/qres.2000.2166 |url= |accessdate= |quote= ] Such a displacement of the Azores High is consistent with paleoclimatic evidence that shows an abrupt onset of a drier climate in Haiti around 3200 ¹⁴C years BP,cite journal |last=Higuera-Gundy |first=Antonia |authorlink= |coauthors="et al." |year=1999 |month= |title=A 10,300 ¹⁴C yr Record of Climate and Vegetation Change from Haiti |journal=Quaternary Research |volume=52 |issue=2 |pages=159–170 |doi=10.1006/qres.1999.2062 |url= |accessdate= |quote= ] and a change towards more humid conditions in the Great Plains during the late-Holocene as more moisture was pumped up the Mississippi Valley through the Gulf coast. Preliminary data from the northern Atlantic coast seem to support the Azores High hypothesis. A 3000-year proxy record from a coastal lake in Cape Cod suggests that hurricane activity increased significantly during the past 500–1000 years, just as the Gulf coast was amid a quiescent period of the last millennium.

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