New England has a history of getting hit by pretty violent hurricanes,

On Wednesday, scientists concluded hurricanes more powerful than any on record in modern times swamped New England between the years 250 to 1150 A.D. after analyzing sediment deposits from a Cape Cod pond.

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"These records suggest that the pre-historical interval was unlike what we've seen in the last few hundred years," said Jeff Donnelly, a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and lead author of the new paper accepted for publication in Earth's Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Donnelly said the hurricanes of that period were likely category 3 storms (Hurricane Katrina) or category 4 storms (Hurricane Hugo) that would be catastrophic if they hit the region today.

The study revealed that warmer sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean pushed the storms. Temperatures soon fell but in recent decades have slowly inched upwards due to climate change. This raises the prospect of stronger storms in the future.

The tropical North Atlantic sea surface has exceeded past temperatures and is expected to warm further over the next century as the climate heats up, Donnelly said. He said these findings should help "scientists better predict the frequency and intensity of hurricanes that could hit the U.S. East and Gulf coasts in the future."

Donnelly and his team hope the study will help find out what can be expected in a warmer climate. It should also help the government start to plan for a category 3 hurricane landfalls every decade or so rather than every 100 or 200 years.

"The risk may be much greater than we anticipated," he added.

Tagshurricane, hurricane katrina, Storm, warmer climate, Calamity, environment issues