Global warming-induced Asian hydrological climate transition across the Miocene–Pliocene boundary

Hong Ao*, Eelco J. Rohling, Ran Zhang, Andrew P. Roberts, Ann E. Holbourn, Jean Baptiste Ladant, Guillaume Dupont-Nivet, Wolfgang Kuhnt, Peng Zhang, Feng Wu, Mark J. Dekkers, Qingsong Liu, Zhonghui Liu, Yong Xu, Christopher J. Poulsen, Alexis Licht, Qiang Sun, John C.H. Chiang, Xiaodong Liu, Guoxiong WuChao Ma, Weijian Zhou, Zhangdong Jin, Xinxia Li, Xinzhou Li, Xianzhe Peng, Xiaoke Qiang, Zhisheng An

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Across the Miocene–Pliocene boundary (MPB; 5.3 million years ago, Ma), late Miocene cooling gave way to the early-to-middle Pliocene Warm Period. This transition, across which atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased to levels similar to present, holds potential for deciphering regional climate responses in Asia—currently home to more than half of the world’s population— to global climate change. Here we find that CO2-induced MPB warming both increased summer monsoon moisture transport over East Asia, and enhanced aridification over large parts of Central Asia by increasing evaporation, based on integration of our ~1–2-thousand-year (kyr) resolution summer monsoon records from the Chinese Loess Plateau aeolian red clay with existing terrestrial records, land-sea correlations, and climate model simulations. Our results offer palaeoclimate-based support for ‘wet-gets-wetter and dry-gets-drier’ projections of future regional hydroclimate responses to sustained anthropogenic forcing. Moreover, our high-resolution monsoon records reveal a dynamic response to eccentricity modulation of solar insolation, with predominant 405-kyr and ~100-kyr periodicities between 8.1 and 3.4 Ma.

Original languageEnglish
Article number6935
Pages (from-to)1-13
JournalNature Communications
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2021

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Global warming-induced Asian hydrological climate transition across the Miocene–Pliocene boundary'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this