A LARGE CALIFORNIA FLOOD AND CORRELATIVE GLOBAL CLIMATIC EVENTS 400 YEARS AGO

A gray silt layer 1-2 cm thick in the central Santa Barbara Basin, dat ed by varve counts to A.D. 1605 +/- 5 yr, implies an intensity of prec ipitation, flooding of regional rivers, and transport of terrigenous d etritus unmatched in the last 1000 yr, The inferred flood may correlat e with the reported rare occurrence of a perennial lake (C-14 dated to 390 +/- 90 B.P.) in California's Mojave Desert, 300 km east of the ar ea draining into the Santa Barbara Basin, The dating of the A.D. 1605 +/- 5 yr flood event is consistent with tree-ring evidence for a wet a nd cold paleoclimate elsewhere in the region, Regional and global clim ate evidence indicates that much of the world also experienced rapid, intense cooling around A.D. 1605, This cooling was probably accompanie d by an equatorward shift of prevailing wind patterns and associated s torm tracks. (C) 1998 University of Washington.