No abstract

[1] Variations in Mg/Ca-based sea surface temperature and oxygen isotope ratio (d 18 O) of the surface water in the northern East China Sea (ECS) were reconstructed with high resolution during the last 18 kyr using planktic foraminifera. Millennial-scale variations between warmer, more saline surface water and cooler, less saline surface water were recognized during the early deglacial period and the Holocene, suggesting changes in the mixing ratio between the Kuroshio Water and the Changjiang Diluted Water. Stronger East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) precipitation events in south China are identified at 10.5, 8.8, 7.0, 5.3, 4.7, 2.9, 1.7, and 0.5 ka, based on sea surface salinity (SSS) records of the northern ECS. Weaker EASM precipitation events are also detected at 9. 3, 8.3, 7.3, 6.0, 3.3, 2.3, 0.7, and 0.4 ka during the Holocene. These events agree with the maxima in d18 O records of stalagmites from various parts of the Changjiang (Yangtze) River drainage. This agreement supports that our SSS record properly captures the millennial-scale dry (less EASM precipitation) events over the drainage basin of the Changjiang River during the Holocene. These dry events are also in good agreement with North Atlantic ice-rafted events, suggesting a teleconnection between North Atlantic climate and the EASM during the Holocene.

Speleothem CaCO3 δ18O is a commonly employed paleomonsoon proxy. However, inferring local rainfall amount from speleothem δ18O can be complicated due to changing source water δ18O, temperature effects, and rainout over the moisture transport path. These complications are addressed using δ18O of planktonic foraminiferal CaCO3, offshore from the Yangtze River Valley (YRV). The advantage is that the effects of global seawater δ18O and local temperature changes can be quantitatively removed, yielding a record of local seawater δ18O, a proxy that responds primarily to dilution by local precipitation and runoff. Whereas YRV speleothem δ18O is dominated by precession-band (23 ky) cyclicity, local seawater δ18O is dominated by eccentricity (100 ky) and obliquity (41 ky) cycles, with almost no precession-scale variance. These results, consistent with records outside the YRV, suggest that East Asian monsoon rainfall is more sensitive to greenhouse gas and high-latitude ice sheet forcing than to direct insolation forcing.

No abstract

The Quaternary hemipelagic sediments of the Japan Sea are characterized by centimeter-to decimeter-scale alternation of dark and light clay to silty clay, which are bio-siliceous and/or bio-calcareous to a various degree. Each of the dark and light layers are considered as deposited synchronously throughout the deeper (> 500 m) part of the sea. However, attempts for correlation and age estimation of individual layers are limited to the upper few tens of meters. In addition, the exact timing of the depositional onset of these dark and light layers and its synchronicity throughout the deeper part of the sea have not been explored previously, although the onset timing was roughly estimated as~1.5 Ma based on the result of Ocean Drilling Program legs 127/128. Consequently, it is not certain exactly when their deposition started, whether deposition of dark and light layers was synchronous and whether they are correlatable also in the earlier part of their depositional history. The Quaternary hemipelagic sediments of the Japan Sea were drilled at seven sites during Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 346 in 2013. Alternation of dark and light layers was recovered at six sites whose water depths are >~900 m, and continuous composite columns were constructed at each site. Here, we report our effort to correlate individual dark layers and estimate their ages based on a newly constructed age model at Site U1424 using the best available paleomagnetic datum and marker tephras. The age model is further tuned to LR04 δ 18 O curve using gamma ray attenuation density (GRA) since it reflects diatom contents that are higher during interglacial high-stands. The constructed age model for Site U1424 is projected to other sites using correlation of dark layers to form a high-resolution and high-precision paleo-observatory network that allows to reconstruct changes in material fluxes with high spatio-temporal resolutions.