title: Early Pleistocene climate in western arid central Asia inferred from loess-palaeosol sequences.
abstract: Arid central Asia (ACA) is one of the most arid regions in the mid-latitudes and one of the main potential dust sources for the northern hemisphere. The lack of in situ early Pleistocene loess/dust records from ACA hinders our comprehensive understanding of the spatio-temporal record of aeolian loess accumulation and long term climatic changes in Asia as a whole. Here, we report the results of sedimentological, chronological and climatic studies of early Pleistocene loess-palaeosol sequences (LPS) from the northeastern Iranian Golestan Province (NIGP) in the western part of ACA. Our results reveal that: 1) Accumulation of loess on the NIGP commenced at ~2.4-1.8 Ma, making it the oldest loess known so far in western ACA; 2) the climate during the early Pleistocene in the NIGP was semi-arid, but wetter, warmer, and less windy than during the late Pleistocene and present interglacial; 3) orbital-scale palaeoclimatic changes in ACA during the early Pleistoceneare in-phase with those of monsoonal Asia, a relationship which was probably related to the growth and decay of northern hemisphere ice sheets.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
authors.forename: Haitao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Department of Soil Science, Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan 49138-15739, Iran.
authors.forename: Mehdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Taheri
authors.affiliation: Department of Soil Science, Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan 49138-15739, Iran.
authors.forename: Farhad
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Khormali
authors.affiliation: Institute of Geology Ufimian scientific Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ufa 450077, Russia; and Kazan Federal University, Kazan 420008, Russia.
authors.forename: Guzel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Danukalova
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
authors.forename: Fahu
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chen
references.citation: Nature. 2001 May 3;411(6833):62-6
references.pmid: 11333976
references.citation: Nature. 2002 Mar 14;416(6877):159-63
references.pmid: 11894089
references.citation: Science. 1985 Feb 15;227(4688):721-5
references.pmid: 17796713