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Modern pollen distribution in the northeastern Indian Ocean and its significance

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Abstract

In order to provide a reference for reconstructing the paleoclimate of the northeastern Indian Ocean, 36 airborne pollen samples were analyzed using methods for airborne pollen, and 26 surface water samples were analyzed using a lab method for surface water. We found that little pollen is airborne over the Indian Ocean in spring, but airborne pollen types and concentrations can help to deduce paleomonsoon strength and direction. The conclusions included the following: (1) Pollen in the sediment was transported mainly via ocean currents instead of the early summer or spring wind. (2) Airborne pollen types and concentrations are proportional to the wind speed and inversely proportional to the pollen distance transported and depend on whether the wind is from the land or from the sea. If the wind is from the land, the pollen concentration is proportional to the angle between the wind direction and the coastline. (3) The pollen concentration in the sample collected from a water depth of 30–45 m is higher than in the samples collected from a depth of 5 m. The pollen concentration and salinity are higher in the equatorial area than in the Northern Hemisphere.

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Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants NSFC 41376058, 41676047), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences with grant no. XDA11030104, the National Programme on Global Change and Air-Sea Interaction (GASI-GEOGE-06-03), and the research program of Guangzhou Science Technology and Innovation Commission (Contract Number 201510010043).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Ocean and Marginal Sea Geology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China

    Chuanxiu Luo, Rong Xiang, Jianguo Liu, Jun Lu, Xiang Su & Qiang Zhang

  2. School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, V8W 2Y2, Canada

    Weiming Jiang

  3. School of Geographical Scinences, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China

    Weiming Jiang

  4. Insititute of Marine and Meteorology, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, China

    Chixin Chen

  5. Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey, China Geological Survey, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Huanhuan Peng

  6. College of Biological Sciences, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Mingxi Yang

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  1. Chuanxiu Luo
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Correspondence to Chuanxiu Luo.

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Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary Fig. 1

Geomorphic features map of the Indian Ocean. Dotted white lines mark boundaries between major ocean regions. Basins are not shown (Harris et al. 2014). (PDF 614 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

Surface wind field over the Indian Ocean with isotach spacing of 2 ms−1: (a) January, (b) April, (c) July, and (d) October.) (Hastenrath 2007). (PDF 331 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 3

a. A schematic representation of identified current branches during the Southwest Monsoon, including some choke point transport numbers (Sv106m3s_1). Current branches indicated (see also Fig. 4b) include the South Equatorial Current (SEC), South Equatorial Countercurrent (SECC), Northeast and Southeast Madagascar Currents (NEMC and SEMC), East African Coast Current (EACC),Somali Current (SC), Southern Gyre (SG), Great Whirl (GW) and associated upwelling wedges, Socotra Eddy (SE), Ras al HaddJet (RHJ) and upwelling wedges off Oman, West Indian Coast Current (WICC), Laccadive High and Low (LH and LL), East Indian Coast Current (EICC), Southwest and Northeast Monsoon Current (SMC and NMC), South Java Current (JC), and Leeuwin Current (LC); b. As in Supplementary Fig. 3a, but for the Northeast Monsoon (Schott and McCreary 2001). For later reference, Fig. 4a and b schematically illustrate the prominent surface currents during both monsoon seasons, as observed from ship-drift climatologies (Cutler and Swallow 1984) and from drifters (Shenoi et al. 1999; Schott and McCreary 2001). (PDF 943 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 4

Vegetation type map of the northeastern Indian Ocean (PDF 967 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

Sampling points of surface water samples in India Ocean (XLSX 11 kb)

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Luo, C., Jiang, W., Chen, C. et al. Modern pollen distribution in the northeastern Indian Ocean and its significance. Int J Biometeorol 62, 1471–1488 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-018-1546-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-018-1546-y

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