Isotopic and magnetic proxies are good indicators of millennial-scale variability of the East Asian monsoon

Louise Fuchs; Jingjing Guo; Enno Schefuß; Youbin Sun; Fei Guo; Martin Ziegler; Francien Peterse

doi:10.1038/s43247-023-01090-z

Isotopic and magnetic proxies are good indicators of millennial-scale variability of the East Asian monsoon

Louise Fuchs^*, Jingjing Guo, Enno Schefuß, Youbin Sun, Fei Guo, Martin Ziegler, Francien Peterse

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Past East Asian Monsoon variability has been reconstructed using oxygen isotopes of cave speleothems as well as proxy indicators from Chinese loess sequences. However, where the speleothem record is dominated by precession cycles, loess magnetic susceptibility primarily shows a glacial-interglacial pattern. Here we generate a ~ 130,000 years high resolution record of plant wax hydrogen isotopes from a loess section on the western Chinese Loess Plateau that can directly be compared with both speleothem oxygen isotopes and with magnetic susceptibility from the same section. We find that variations in our plant wax hydrogen isotope record follow the precessional pattern of the speleothem record as opposed to the glacial-interglacial changes in magnetic susceptibility. We propose that hydrogen isotopes mainly record precipitation during the growing season, whereas magnetic susceptibility represents an annual climate signal, including precipitation and temperature. Our findings imply that summer vs annual climate variability is driven by distinct orbital forcings.

Original language	English
Article number	425
Pages (from-to)	1-9
Journal	Communications Earth & Environment
Volume	4
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-01090-z
Publication status	Published - Dec 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

Funding

We thank Klaas Nierop and Desmond Eefting (UU) for assistance with lipid biomarker analysis and Frits Hilgen (UU) for help with spectral analysis. No permissions were required for field sampling. This work was financially supported by grants from NWO-Vidi (no. 192.074) to F.P. and from NSFC (no. 42230514) to Y.S., and carried out under the umbrella of the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC). This project also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie, grant agreement No 847504. The isotope analyses were supported by the Cluster of Excellence, “The Ocean Floor - Earth’s Uncharted Interface” at MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences. We thank Ralph Kreutz for technical support. Three anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments that further improved this work.

Funders	Funder number
Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions	847504
National Natural Science Foundation of China	42230514
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
Exzellenzcluster Ozean der Zukunft
Netherlands Earth System Science Centre
MARUM – Zentrum für Marine Umweltwissenschaften

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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s43247-023-01090-zFinal published version, 1.89 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Past East Asian Monsoon variability has been reconstructed using oxygen isotopes of cave speleothems as well as proxy indicators from Chinese loess sequences. However, where the speleothem record is dominated by precession cycles, loess magnetic susceptibility primarily shows a glacial-interglacial pattern. Here we generate a ~ 130,000 years high resolution record of plant wax hydrogen isotopes from a loess section on the western Chinese Loess Plateau that can directly be compared with both speleothem oxygen isotopes and with magnetic susceptibility from the same section. We find that variations in our plant wax hydrogen isotope record follow the precessional pattern of the speleothem record as opposed to the glacial-interglacial changes in magnetic susceptibility. We propose that hydrogen isotopes mainly record precipitation during the growing season, whereas magnetic susceptibility represents an annual climate signal, including precipitation and temperature. Our findings imply that summer vs annual climate variability is driven by distinct orbital forcings.",

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AU - Sun, Youbin

AU - Guo, Fei

AU - Ziegler, Martin

AU - Peterse, Francien

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Isotopic and magnetic proxies are good indicators of millennial-scale variability of the East Asian monsoon

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

UN SDGs

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