East Asian monsoon instability at the stage 5a/4 transition

The physics involved in the abrupt climate changes of the late Quaternary have eluded paleoclimatologists for Man. years, More paleoclimatic records characteristic of different elements of the global climate system a-re needed for better understanding of the cause-feedback relationships in the syste...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Boreas
Main Authors: Xiong, S, Ding, ZL, Liu, TS, Zhang, JZ
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: TAYLOR & FRANCIS AS 2002
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Online Access:http://ir.ieecas.cn/handle/361006/12064
https://doi.org/10.1080/030094802320129935
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Summary:The physics involved in the abrupt climate changes of the late Quaternary have eluded paleoclimatologists for Man. years, More paleoclimatic records characteristic of different elements of the global climate system a-re needed for better understanding of the cause-feedback relationships in the system. The East Asian monsoon is an important part of the global climate system and the mechanical links between the East Asian monsoon and other climatic elements around the world may hold a key to our knowledge of abrupt climate changes in East Asia and probably over a larger part of the globe. Previous studies hake detected millennial-scale winter monsoon oscillations during the last glaciation and probably also during the last interglaciation in loess sequences across China. However. less attention has been paid to the abrupt summer monsoon changes and the stage 5a/ 4 transition. an important period for the evolution of the East Asian monsoon when the global climate shifted towards the last glaciation. Here we report on two loess sections from eastern China which were dated using a thermoluminescence (TL) technique. The pedogenic and other sediment parameters suggest that the summer monsoon experienced a two-step abrupt retreat at the stage 5a/4 transition, The variations in the proxies for the winter monsoon are synchionized with the summer monsoon proxies during this brief interval, implying a direct and immediate link between high latitude and low latitude mechanisms' These changes may be correlated with similar climatic oscillation observed in the North Atlantic. Europe and Antarctica. raising the possibility that the forcing factors that induced these changes are global in extent.