Impact of Mountains in Southern China on the Eocene Climates of East Asia

Abstract

Several regional climates during the Eocene are still under debate, and the Eocene environment of China is a particular focus of the discussion. One view, based on the widely distributed pollen of Ephedripites, as well as red beds and evaporite sediments, suggests that a dry zonal belt (Figure 1a) dominated mid-latitude China from west to east (Guo et al., 2002,;Sun & Wang, 2005;Wang, 1990). To the north and the south of the arid zonal belt, humid climates appeared in Northeast and South China, where pollen assemblages indicative of humid conditions, as well as coal and oil shales, occur in Eocene sediments (