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The East Asian Monsoon since the Last Glacial Maximum: Evidence from geological records in northern China

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  • Special Topic: China since the Last Glacial Maximum
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Abstract

The impact of global warming on the climate of northern China has been investigated intensively, and the behavior of the East Asian monsoon during previous intervals of climatic warming may provide insight into future changes. In this study, we use paleovegetation records from loess and lake sediments in the marginal zone of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) to reconstruct the EASM during the interval of warming from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the Holocene. The results show that during the LGM, desert steppe or dry steppe dominated much of northern China; in addition, the southeastern margin of the deserts east of the Helan Mountains had a distribution similar to that of the present-day, or was located slightly further south, due to the cold and dry climate caused by a strengthened East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) and weakened EASM. During the last deglaciation, with the strengthening of the EASM and concomitant weakening of the EAWM, northern China gradually became humid. However, this trend was interrupted by abrupt cooling during the Heinrich 1 (H1) and Younger Dryas (YD) events. The EASM intensified substantially during the Holocene, and the monsoon rain belt migrated at least 300 km northwestwards, which led to the substantial shrinking of the desert area in the central and eastern part of northern China, and to the large expansion of plants favored by warm and humid conditions. Paleoclimatic records from the marginal zone of the EASM all show that the EASM reached its peak in the mid-Holocene, and past global climatic warming significantly strengthened the EASM, thereby greatly improving the ecological environment in northern China. Thus, northern China is expected to become wetter as global warming continues. Finally, high resolution Holocene vegetation records are sparse compared with the numerous records on the orbital timescale, and there is a need for more studies of Holocene climatic variability on the centennial-to-decadal scale.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Wen R L for providing vegetation data, and Huang X F and Wang Y D for formatting the document. We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0603403), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Nos. XDB26000000 & XDA05120204) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41672175 & 41725010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Shiling Yang & Jule Xiao

  2. Institutions of Earth Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Shiling Yang & Jule Xiao

  3. CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing, 100044, China

    Shiling Yang & Jule Xiao

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Shiling Yang & Jule Xiao

  5. Bureau of General Affairs, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100864, China

    Xinxin Dong

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  1. Shiling Yang
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Correspondence to Shiling Yang.

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Yang, S., Dong, X. & Xiao, J. The East Asian Monsoon since the Last Glacial Maximum: Evidence from geological records in northern China. Sci. China Earth Sci. 62, 1181–1192 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-018-9254-8

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