Abstract
Speleothem oxygen isotope records have revolutionized our understanding of the paleo East Asian monsoon, yet there is fundamental disagreement on what they represent in terms of the hydroclimate changes. We report a multiproxy speleothem record of monsoon evolution during the last deglaciation from the middle Yangtze region, which indicates a wetter central eastern China during North Atlantic cooling episodes, despite the oxygen isotopic record suggesting a weaker monsoon. We show that this apparent contradiction can be resolved if the changes are interpreted as a lengthening of the Meiyu rains and shortened post-Meiyu stage, in accordance with a recent hypothesis. Model simulations support this interpretation and further reveal the role of the westerlies in communicating the North Atlantic influence to the East Asian climate.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 580-583 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Science |
| Volume | 362 |
| Issue number | 6414 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We gratefully acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and C. Hu for the personal communication about cave monitoring work in Heshang Cave. We thank D. S. Battisti and C. M. Bitz for their assistance in developing the model simulations This work was supported by the Key R&D Project of Ministry of Science and Technology (grant no. 2016YFA0601100), the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (grants 41330103 and 41773135), the 111 Program (National Bureau for Foreign Experts and Ministry of Education of China; grant B08030), and the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant AGS-1405479).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Authors.