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Holocene millennial-scale megaflood events point to ENSO-driven extreme climate changes

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Abstract

Reconstructing the Holocene megaflood history is a key component of understanding the mechanism of past climate change and assessing the potential impact of future catastrophic events. The Pearl River is the longest watercourse in southern China, and its lower reach has been identified as one of the world’s most vulnerable regions for flood exposure. However, there is a complete lack of millennial-scale geological records of paleomegafloods for the future prediction of once-in-a-hundred (even once-in-a-thousand) year floods in southern China. Here, we identified a series of paleomegaflood deposits interbedded with wood-rich peat layers in the lower West Pearl River area. All paleoflood layers have been well dated using AMS 14C dating method. According to the regional correlation of the flood sequence, sediment characteristics and provenance analysis, there have been at least 7 megafloods corresponding to once-in-a-thousand-year events in the lower reaches of the West Pearl River during the past 6000 years, with an average return period of approximately 855 years. The identified paleomegafloods were coeval with periods of strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), indicating that weakening of the Asian summer monsoon, associated with enhanced ENSO variability, may have triggered abnormally high precipitation leading to flooding of exceptional magnitude in southern China. In addition, the most prominent paleomegafloods identified in the lower Pearl River coincided with intervals of lower precipitation and fewer storms in central-eastern China, indicating the intensification of the meridional “tripole” pattern of precipitation across eastern China during the latter half of the Holocene. Increased land use and deforestation over the last 2000 years have resulted in soil loss and rapid degradation of local primeval forest ecosystems, leading to more catastrophic flooding. Large amounts of rice pollen in the uppermost flood layer during the Song Dynasty indicate that this megaflood may have inundated a large area of cultivated land. The periodic occurrence of Holocene megafloods not only caused damage to human existence, but also affected the evolution of local civilization. This study reveals for the first time a series of Holocene millennial-scale megafloods and sheds new light on the importance of atmosphere-ocean interactions in the tropical Pacific and monsoon subtropical climate dynamics for precipitation anomalies in East Asia. Our data yield valuable information for future research into climate extremes and hazard prevention.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions and comments. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42072205 & 41301582), the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFF0801501), and the Innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (Grant No. 311022010).

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  1. The authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Key Lab of Geodynamics and Geohazards, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, 519082, China

    Cong Chen, Zhuo Zheng, Kangyou Huang, Xiao Zhang, Yongjie Tang, Qiuchi Wan & Guifang Zhang

  2. Key Laboratory of Separation and Comprehensive Utilization of Rare Metals, Institute of Resources Utilization and Rare Earth Development, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Yanwei Zheng

  3. Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, 519082, China

    Zhuo Zheng, Kangyou Huang & Guifang Zhang

  4. Key Lab of Guangdong for Utilization of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Geospatial Information Technology and Application, Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510070, China

    Yongqiang Zong

  5. Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai’i, 96822, USA

    Barry V. Rolett

  6. College of Ocean and Meteorology, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, 524088, China

    Huanhuan Peng

  7. Institute of Evolutionary Sciences of Montpellier, University of Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, 34095, France

    Rachid Chedaddi

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  1. Cong Chen
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Chen, C., Zheng, Y., Zheng, Z. et al. Holocene millennial-scale megaflood events point to ENSO-driven extreme climate changes. Sci. China Earth Sci. 66, 2530–2545 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-023-1196-y

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