Indian monsoon variability on millennial-orbital timescales

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Kathayat, Gayatri, Cheng, Hai, Sinha, Ashish, Spoetl, Christoph, Edwards, R. Lawrence, Zhang, Haiwei, Li, Xianglei, Yi, Liang, Ning, Youfeng, Cai, Yanjun, Lui, Weiguo Lui, Breitenbach, Sebastian F. M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Science & Technology; ICE-AGE TERMINATIONS; PAST 800,000 YEARS; SUMMER-MONSOON; CLIMATE VARIABILITY; ASIAN MONSOON; HULU CAVE; RECORD; CORE; PRECIPITATION; GREENLAND; Science & Technology - Other Topics; Multidisciplinary Sciences; Antarctic; Greenland; Indian; Hulu; Antarc*; ice core
• Online Access: http://ir.ieecas.cn/handle/361006/5756; https://doi.org/10.1038/srep24374

The Indian summer monsoon (ISM) monsoon is critical to billions of people living in the region. Yet, significant debates remain on primary ISM drivers on millennial-orbital timescales. Here, we use speleothem oxygen isotope (delta O-18) data from Bittoo cave, Northern India to reconstruct ISM variability over the past 280,000 years. We find strong coherence between North Indian and Chinese speleothem delta O-18 records from the East Asian monsoon domain, suggesting that both Asian monsoon subsystems exhibit a coupled response to changes in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation (NHSI) without significant temporal lags, supporting the view that the tropical-subtropical monsoon variability is driven directly by precession-induced changes in NHSI. Comparisons of the North Indian record with both Antarctic ice core and sea-surface temperature records from the southern Indian Ocean over the last glacial period do not suggest a dominant role of Southern Hemisphere climate processes in regulating the ISM variability on millennial-orbital timescales.