We report on a loess-paleosol sequence (LPS) near Remizovka, located in the northern Tian Shan piedmont of southeastern Kazakhstan. This site represents a key record for Late Pleistocene climatic fluctuations at the intersection of major northern hemisphere climate subsystems. This paper develops a synthesized dataset of previous conflicting studies at Remizovka by characterizing their (paleo)topographic context, which had remained previously overlooked. Digital elevation models, satellite images, and archival photography characterize recent topographic developments. Two well-developed pedocomplexes, which we investigate in detail and date by luminescence mark the paleotopography during Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 5. Peak dust accumulation rates here occurred during the middle MIS 5 and MIS 4/early MIS 3. These are partially comparable with records from neighboring regions, but not in phase with global ice volume records. This discrepancy may be related to a distinct regional environmental response to larger-scale climatic drivers and local topographic influences on dust deposition patterns. Our findings confirm the potential of the LPS Remizovka to provide high-resolution paleoclimate data for the Late Pleistocene. The three-dimensional stratigraphic reconstruction reinforces the caution required to correctly interpret loess formation processes prior to their interpretation as paleoclimate archives, and provides guidelines for a more suitable approach.

Earth’s climatic evolution over the last 5 million years is primarily understood from the perspective of marine mechanisms, however, the role of terrestrial feedbacks remains largely unexplored. Here we reconstruct the last 5 million years of soil moisture variability in Central Asia using paleomagnetism data and isotope geochemistry of an 80 m-thick sedimentary succession at Charyn Canyon, Kazakhstan. We identify a long-term trend of increasing aridification throughout the period, along with shorter-term variability related to the interaction between mid-latitude westerlies and the Siberian high-pressure system. This record highlights the long-term contribution of mid-latitude Eurasian terrestrial systems to the modulation of moisture transfer into the Northern Hemisphere oceans and back onto land via westerly air flow. The response of Earth-surface dynamics to Plio-Pleistocene climatic change in Central Asia likely generated terrestrial feedbacks affecting ocean and atmospheric circulation. This missing terrestrial link elucidates the significance of land-water feedbacks for long-term global climate.

Reconstruction of mass accumulation rates (MARs) in loess deposits are widely used for interpreting long‐term aeolian transport and climate dynamics in terrestrial environments. However, these interpretations are often driven by a preponderance of reconstructions from individual or selected sites, which can bias our understanding of past climate, especially in the absence of other proxy information. Recent studies on MARs from multiple loess sites in Arid Central Asia (ACA) reveal disparities in the timing of peaks in accumulation between sites, as well as asynchronies with loess flux in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). We investigate this issue by (1) dating five new sites from the western Ili Basin, therefore extending the spatial cover of loess chronologies across ACA and (2) combining that with MARs from >30 sites across ACA and the CLP over the last 60 ka. Our results indicate spatio‐temporal inhomogeneity in the timing and rate of loess deposition across the ACA, and highlight the importance of interrogating local and regional influences on dust supply and transport. Our synthesis of MARs from ACA and the CLP suggests that the timing of peak dust flux as an indicator of large‐scale climate dynamics is best derived from an aggregate of sites; this removes site‐specific bias where local processes or topographic settings outweigh the climate signature.

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Identifying the original source rocks of sediments is important for understanding sediment cycling. For aeolian sediments, pinpointing provenance has additional advantages of facilitating the reconstruction of transport pathways that relate to atmospheric circulation, and thereby changes in climate dynamics through time. Aeolian loess deposits have long been recognized as valuable archives of past climates in terrestrial environments (Kukla et al., 1988;Schaetzl et al., 2018). Loess sequences represent long-term accumulation of aeolian dust and thus identifying their provenance provides an important proxy for reconstructing changes in atmospheric circulation through time. A number of established tools are used to identify the source of dust in loess deposits. These include grain-size analysis, in particular grain sorting and end-member modeling, to elucidate transport modes and likely source area types (