Century-scale events in monsoonal climate over the past 24,000 years

Sirocko, Frank; Sarnthein, Michael; Erlenkeuser, Helmut; Lange, Heinz; Arnold, Maurice; Duplessy, Jean‐Claude

doi:10.1038/364322a0

Cited by 554 publications

(358 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…These rains imply a strongly intensified summer monsoon that carried more marine moisture into subtropical South China. The timing of this event is coeval with an early Holocene maximum in monsoon precipitation which occurred in the countries encompassing the Arabian Sea (Sirocko et al, 1993). This synchroneity suggests a hemisphere-wide joint forcing of long-term (and short-term) changes in the hydrological cycle of the Asian monsoon.…”

Section: Records Of Continental Wetness and Ariditymentioning

confidence: 81%

“…9), also in the southeast (Thunell and Miao, 1996). The subsequent Preboreal to early Holocene culmination in the East Asian monsoon precisely paralleled a comparable maximum of the Indian summer monsoon found in Arabian Sea sediments (Sirocko et al, 1993), when solar insolation and summer temperatures on Greenland (Koerner and Fisher, 1990) reached a maximum.…”

Section: Linkages Of Monsoon To Global Climatic Change: Leads and Lagsmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…They coincided with the most prominent Holocene cooling in the GISP2 ice-core record ( Fig. 11; Grootes and Stuiver, 1997), again with a short-lasting break-down in NADW ventilation (Maslin et al, 1996;Knaack, 1997), and with the start of the mid-Holocene dust discharge from Arabia into the Arabian Sea (Sirocko et al, 1993). However, any closer understanding of the actual linkages between these climate signals requires a more precise definition of the decadal-to centennial-scale leads and lags, which is limited by the precision of 14 C dates and their conversion into calendar years.…”

Section: Linkages Of Monsoon To Global Climatic Change: Leads and Lagsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, interglacials led to wet climate and soil formation in China (Kukla et al, 1988;Banerjee, 1995;Porter and An, 1995). An early Holocene maximum in monsoon moisture was documented in both the Arabian Sea at 11,600-8600 calibrated yr BP (Sirocko et al, 1993(Sirocko et al, , 1996 and China (Pye and Zhou, 1989;Shi et al, 1993; poorly dated in Winkler and Wang, 1993;Porter and An, 1995), and also in a methane maximum of the GRIP ice core (Blunier et al, 1995). Based on a marine sediment record from the Arabian Sea, the Indian monsoon varied in intra-Holocene cycles of about 1050, 1500, and 3000 years (Sirocko et al, 1996), i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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East Asian monsoon climate during the Late Pleistocene: high-resolution sediment records from the South China Sea

et al. 1999

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Based on the study of 10 sediment cores and 40 core-top samples from the South China Sea (SCS) we obtained proxy records of past changes in East Asian monsoon climate on millennial to bidecadal time scales over the last 220,000 years. Climate proxies such as global sea level, estimates of paleotemperature, salinity, and nutrients in surface water, ventilation of deep water, paleowind strength, freshwater lids, fluvial and=or eolian sediment supply, and sediment winnowing on the sea floor were derived from planktonic and benthic stable-isotope records, the distribution of siliciclastic grain sizes, planktonic foraminifera species, and the U K 37 biomarker index. Four cores were AMS-14 C-dated. Two different regimes of monsoon circulation dominated the SCS over the last two glacial cycles, being linked to the minima and maxima of Northern Hemisphere solar insolation. (1) Glacial stages led to a stable estuarine circulation and a strong O 2 -minimum layer via a closure of the Borneo sea strait. Strong northeast monsoon and cool surface water occurred during winter, in part fed by an inflow from the north tip of Luzon. In contrast, summer temperatures were as high as during interglacials, hence the seasonality was strong. Low wetness in subtropical South China was opposed to large river input from the emerged Sunda shelf, serving as glacial refuge for tropical forest. (2) Interglacials were marked by a strong inflow of warm water via the Borneo sea strait, intense upwelling southeast of Vietnam and continental wetness in China during summer, weaker northeast monsoon and high sea-surface temperatures during winter, i.e. low seasonality. On top of the long-term variations we found millennial-to centennial-scale cold and dry, warm and humid spells during the Holocene, glacial Terminations I and II, and Stage 3. The spells were coeval with published variations in the Indian monsoon and probably, with the cold Heinrich and warm Dansgaard-Oeschger events recorded in Greenland ice cores, thus suggesting global climatic teleconnections. Holocene oscillations in the runoff from South China centered around periodicities of 775 years, ascribed to subharmonics of the 1500-year cycle in oceanic thermohaline circulation. 102=84-year cycles are tentatively assigned to the Gleissberg period of solar activity. Phase relationships among various monsoon proxies near the onset of Termination IA suggest that summer-monsoon rains and fluvial runoff from South China had already intensified right after the last glacial maximum (LGM) insolation minimum, coeval with the start of Antarctic ice melt Wang et al. / Marine Geology 156 (1999) prior to the δ 18 O signals of global sea-level rise. Vice versa, the strength of winter-monsoon winds decreased in short centennial steps only 3000-4000 years later, along with the melt of glacial ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere.

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Section: Records Of Continental Wetness and Ariditymentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Linkages Of Monsoon To Global Climatic Change: Leads and Lagsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Linkages Of Monsoon To Global Climatic Change: Leads and Lagsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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East Asian monsoon climate during the Late Pleistocene: high-resolution sediment records from the South China Sea

et al. 1999

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“…It is widely accepted that monsoonal changes on millennial or longer time-scales are predominantly forced by orbitally-induced changes in solar insolation and subsequent shifts in the position of the ITCZ (Sirocko et al, 1993;Overpeck et al, 1996; Y.J. Wang et al, 2001Fleitmann et al, 2003; P.X.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asynchronous evolution of the Indian and East Asian Summer Monsoon indicated by Holocene moisture patterns in monsoonal central Asia

Wang

Liu

Herzschuh

2010

Earth-Science Reviews

298

111

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a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oThe numerical meta-analysis of 92 proxy records (72 sites) of moisture and/or temperature change confirms earlier findings that the dominant trends of climatic evolution in monsoonal central Asia since the Last Glacial roughly parallel changes in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, i.e. the period following the Last Glacial Maximum was characterized by dry and cold conditions until 15 cal. kyr BP, followed by a warm, wet period coincident with the Bølling/Allerød warm period and terminated by a cold, dry reversal during the Younger Dryas period. After an abrupt increase at the start of the Holocene, warm and wet conditions prevailed until ca. 4 cal. kyr BP when moisture levels and temperatures started to decrease. Ordination of moisture records reveals strong spatial heterogeneity in moisture evolution during the last 10 cal. kyr. The Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) areas (northern India, Tibetan Plateau and southwest China) exhibit maximum wet conditions during the early Holocene, while many records from the area of the East Asian Summer Monsoon indicate relatively dry conditions, especially in north-central China where the maximum moisture levels occurred during the mid-Holocene. We assign such phenomena to strengthened Hadley Circulation centered over the Tibetan Plateau during the early Holocene which resulted in subsidence in the East Asian monsoonal regions leading to relatively dry conditions. Our observations of the asynchronous nature of the two Asian monsoon subsystems on millennial time scales have also been observed on annual time-scales as well as implied through the spatial analysis of vertical air motion patterns after strong ascending airflows over the Tibetan Plateau area that were calculated from NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data for the last 30 years. Analogous with the early Holocene, the enhancement of the ISM in a 'future warming world' will result in an increase in the asynchronous nature of the monsoon subsystems; this trend is already observed in the meteorological data from the last 15 years.

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Reconstruction of the late Quaternary environment of the lower Luni Plains, Thar Desert, India

et al. 2001

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Century-scale events in monsoonal climate over the past 24,000 years

Cited by 554 publications

References 29 publications

East Asian monsoon climate during the Late Pleistocene: high-resolution sediment records from the South China Sea

East Asian monsoon climate during the Late Pleistocene: high-resolution sediment records from the South China Sea

Asynchronous evolution of the Indian and East Asian Summer Monsoon indicated by Holocene moisture patterns in monsoonal central Asia

Reconstruction of the late Quaternary environment of the lower Luni Plains, Thar Desert, India

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