Geoscientists have found possible evidence of two typhoons that, according to Japanese legend, wiped out invading Mongol fleets in the years 1274 and 1281.

Jon Woodruff of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his colleagues collected a 2,000-year-old sediment record from a coastal lake on Japan's Kyushu island, where the Mongol attack was aimed. The cores contain flood deposits that show two instances of flooding in the late thirteenth century, which may have come from the pair of 'Kamikaze' typhoons.

Such storms could have been more common at the time, thanks to the presence of an El Niño, which causes changes in temperature and precipitation worldwide.

Geology http://doi.org/xqp (2014)