Reconciliation of hydroclimate sequences from the Chinese Loess Plateau and low-latitude East Asian Summer Monsoon regions over the past 14,500 years

摘要

We discuss replicated stalagmite 8180 records with interannual-to-multidecadal resolution from Lianhua Cave on the Chinese Loess Plateau to illustrate the precipitation history of the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) region over the last 14.5 thousand years (ka BP, before 1950 CE, hereafter), and to re-evaluate the inconsistency in the proxy-inferred palaeoclimate time series in northern China. Agreement between the stalagmite delta O-18 from Lianhua and other caves from central-southern China indicates that regional climate changes after the Last Glacial were concurrent across mainland China, indicating that insolation was the primary factor controlling the evolution of the Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM). The stalagmite O-18 enrichment of 2.5 parts per thousand in the Younger Dryas and 1.7 parts per thousand. during the 82-ka BP event in Lianhua were larger than those in caves from central and southern China. The evidence suggests that different meridional responses of weak precipitation conditions in the ASM realm occurred during these two abrupt events, driven by high-latitude forcing in the Northern Hemisphere. The heterogeneous hydroclimate sequences in northern China inferred from different natural archives are most likely attributable to the complexity of the formations and/or some chronological uncertainty. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.