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Early-Holocene Paleo-Tropical Cyclone Activity Inferred from a Sedimentary Sequence in South Yellow Sea, East Asia

  • Pacific Plate Subduction and the Yanshanian Movement in Eastern China
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Abstract

Although tropical cyclones play a critical role in global climate changes, their long-term variations in the past are not well documented. In this article, a sediment core from the South Yellow Sea was studied in order to reveal the influence of tropical cyclones on depositional processes. Integrating the results of radiocarbon dating and sediment grain-size analysis, we show that the studied sequence was deposited during the Holocene and the sedimentary dynamics were stable and at a relatively low level, with a median grain-size range of 5.3–8.7 µm. It is found that coarse particles were likely transported by highly dynamic depositional events. Based on the findings, a record of paleo-tropical cyclones was derived for the Early Holocene, and several intervals with a reduced influence of tropical cyclones were identified. In addition, it reveals a good agreement between the grain-size results and the changes in solar activity, monsoonal intensity, and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Overall, it can be concluded that the influence of tropical cyclones on the sedimentary evolution of the muddy zone of the South Yellow Sea was substantial during the Early Holocene on centennial timescales, and that solar maxima may control the intensity of tropical cyclones via strengthening the walker circulation over the tropical Pacific.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Prof. Jianhua Gao from Nanjin University of China for providing helps in sediment grain-size measurements, and three anonymous reviewers for their suggestion and comments in improving this manuscript. This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFE02 02401), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41602349 and 41976192), and the Marine S&T Fund of Shandong Province for Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao) (No. 2022QNLM050203). All data supporting the findings of this study are available at https://mda.vliz.be/directlink.php?fid=VLIZ_00000824_6270c53c44bed859352062. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1417-z.

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Correspondence to Bangqi Hu or Liang Yi.

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Liu, G., Han, X., Chen, Y. et al. Early-Holocene Paleo-Tropical Cyclone Activity Inferred from a Sedimentary Sequence in South Yellow Sea, East Asia. J. Earth Sci. 33, 789–801 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1417-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1417-z

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