title: The Asian monsoon over the past 640,000 years and ice age terminations.
abstract: Oxygen isotope records from Chinese caves characterize changes in both the Asian monsoon and global climate. Here, using our new speleothem data, we extend the Chinese record to cover the full uranium/thorium dating range, that is, the past 640,000 years. The record's length and temporal precision allow us to test the idea that insolation changes caused by the Earth's precession drove the terminations of each of the last seven ice ages as well as the millennia-long intervals of reduced monsoon rainfall associated with each of the terminations. On the basis of our record's timing, the terminations are separated by four or five precession cycles, supporting the idea that the '100,000-year' ice age cycle is an average of discrete numbers of precession cycles. Furthermore, the suborbital component of monsoon rainfall variability exhibits power in both the precession and obliquity bands, and is nearly in anti-phase with summer boreal insolation. These observations indicate that insolation, in part, sets the pace of the occurrence of millennial-scale events, including those associated with terminations and 'unfinished terminations'.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.|Department of Earth Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
authors.forename: Hai
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
authors.forename: R Lawrence
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Edwards
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth Sciences, California State University, Dominguez Hills, Carson, California 90747, USA.
authors.forename: Ashish
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sinha
authors.affiliation: Institut für Geologie, Universität Innsbruck, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Spötl
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.affiliation: College of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China.
authors.forename: Shitao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
authors.forename: Megan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.affiliation: Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Gayatri
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kathayat
authors.affiliation: Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, 639798 Singapore.
authors.forename: Xianfeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Xianglei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China.
authors.forename: Xinggong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: College of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China.
authors.forename: Yongjin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Youfeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ning
authors.affiliation: Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Haiwei
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000864:Antarctic Regions; D001208:Asia; D059552:Caves; D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change / Q000266:history; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000737:chemistry; D049690:History, Ancient; D046448:Ice Cover; D011868:Radioisotopes / Q000032:analysis; D055110:Radiometric Dating; D011891:Rain; D012621:Seasons; D013696:Temperature; D013910:Thorium / Q000032:analysis; D013997:Time Factors; D014501:Uranium / Q000032:analysis
chemical_list: D011868:Radioisotopes; D014501:Uranium; D013910:Thorium