Dominant 100,000-year precipitation cyclicity in a late Miocene lake from northeast Tibet

• Published in: Science Advances
• Main Authors: Nie, Junsheng, Garzione, Carmala, Su, Qingda, Liu, Qing-Song, Zhang, Rui, Heslop, David, Necula, C, Zhang, Shihong, Song, Yougui, Luo, Zeng
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarc*; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/236909; https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1600762; https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/236909/3/01_Nie_Dominant_100%252C000-year_2017.pdf.jpg

East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) precipitation received by northern China over the past 800 thousand years (ky) is characterized by dominant 100-ky periodicity, mainly attributed to CO2 and Northern Hemisphere insolation–driven ice sheet forcing. We established an EASM record in the Late Miocene from lacustrine sediments in the Qaidam Basin, northern China, which appears to exhibit a dominant 100-ky periodicity similar to the EASM records during the Late Quaternary. Because evidence suggests that partial or ephemeral ice existed in the Northern Hemisphere during the Late Miocene, we attribute the 100-ky cycles to CO2 and Southern Hemisphere insolation–driven Antarctic ice sheet forcing. This indicates a >6–million year earlier onset of the dominant 100-ky Asian monsoon and, likely, glacial and CO2 cycles and may indicate dominant forcing of Northern Hemisphere climate by CO2 and Southern Hemisphere ice sheets in a warm world. This work was funded by the national key research and development program of China (2016YFE0109500), the (973) National Basic Research Program of China (grant no. 2013CB956400), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDB03020400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 41422204, 41172329, and 41290253), and the U.S. NSF (grant no. 1545859).