Marine Geology 451 (2022) 106891 Available online 28 August 2022 0025-3227/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Research Article Sedimentary records of mid-Holocene extreme storm events on the north bank of Hangzhou Bay, East China Yingying Wu a , Xiang Huang b , Xiuwen Zheng b , Michael E. Meadows c, d, e , Zhanghua Wang a, f, g, * a State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China b Shanghai Museum, Shanghai 200003, China c Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa d School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China e College of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004, China f Institute of Archaeological Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China g Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, Zhuhai 519080, China A R T I C L E INFO Editor: Shu Gao Keywords: Chenier ridge Grain size Foraminiferal assemblage Storm deposits Typhoon history Global climate change ABSTRACT Reconstructing the long-term history of tropical cyclones is key to understanding their driving mechanisms and to enable better predictions of future extreme storm events. However, the available history of typhoons, based on sedimentary records in the northwest Pacifc basin, remains very limited. In this study, we conducted multi-proxy analyses of sedimentary profles collected from a chenier ridge on the north bank of Hangzhou Bay, East China. We applied evidences from the lithology, grain size, and marine micro-fossils on sediments in these profles, dated using OSL and AMS 14 C, to reveal the mid-Holocene sedimentary environmental evolution and obtain records of extreme storm events. The lithology and foraminiferal assemblages indicate an aggradational suc- cession from intertidal to supratidal fats incorporating two layers of storm deposits preserved in the chenier ridge. The lower layer of storm deposits was formed in the intertidal fats at ca. 6.0 cal. kyr BP, while the upper layer was formed in the supratidal fats at ca. 5.2–4.9 cal. kyr BP. The storm deposits are characterized by coarsened grain size and the prevalence of allochthonous foraminiferal species, including E. advenum, A. annectens, and A. compressiuscula which occur in the inner and middle shelf of East China Sea. The extreme storm events at ca. 6.0 and 5.2–4.9 cal. kyr BP recorded at the chenier ridge have also been described at different sites on the southeast coast of Hangzhou Bay. Together with previously reported storm deposits at ca. 4.5 cal. kyr BP, we suggest that these mid-Holocene extreme typhoon events on the East China coast resulted from global climate changes driven by solar irradiance. 1. Introduction Tropical cyclones are among the most devastating disasters affecting the world. The northwest Pacifc basin in particular is subject to tropical cyclones on a regular basis as revealed by instrumental records, in terms of both overall frequency (30% of global total; Chan, 2005) and peak cyclone wind intensities (Woodruff et al., 2013). The population exposed to tropical cyclones is expected to increase in the future due to their intensifcation in a warming climate (Peduzzi et al., 2012; Ranson et al., 2014; Bl¨ oschl et al., 2017; Emanuel, 2017; Michaelis et al., 2017; Oppenheimer et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2022). Moreover, the combina- tion of extreme storm events and accelerated sea-level rise will increase the risk of coastal fooding in the near future (Woodruff et al., 2013). For example, models under future climate scenarios predict an increase in food risk from extreme events by a factor of ×1.5 to ×4 in the Yangtze Delta, East China, in the next 50 years (Tessler et al., 2015). Detailed analysis of the global occurrence and mechanism of extreme storm events is therefore urgently needed and the reconstruction of paleo- storm history plays an important role in such studies. Hangzhou Bay, East China, is located in the transitional zone of two major groups of northwest Pacifc basin typhoon tracks that make landfall in Southeast and Northeast Asia (Elsner and Liu, 2003). Such a location is ideal to investigate the relationship between typhoon activ- ities and climate change because, as predicted, tropical cyclones will move northward and westward in the northwest Pacifc basin in response to climate warming (Chen and Huang, 2008; Zhou et al., 2019). * Corresponding author at: State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China. E-mail address: zhwang@geo.ecnu.edu.cn (Z. Wang). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Marine Geology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/margo https://doi.org/10.1016/j.margeo.2022.106891 Received 1 May 2022; Received in revised form 7 August 2022; Accepted 23 August 2022