Climate variations of Central Asia on orbital to millennial timescales.
The extent to which climate variability in Central Asia is causally linked to large-scale changes in the Asian monsoon on varying timescales remains a longstanding question. Here we present precisely dated high-resolution speleothem oxygen-carbon isotope and trace element records of Central Asia's hydroclimate variability from Tonnel'naya cave, Uzbekistan, and Kesang cave, western China. On orbital timescales, the supra-regional climate variance, inferred from our oxygen isotope records, exhibits a precessional rhythm, punctuated by millennial-scale abrupt climate events, suggesting a close coupling with the Asian monsoon. However, the local hydroclimatic variability at both cave sites, inferred from carbon isotope and trace element records, shows climate variations that are distinctly different from their supra-regional modes. Particularly, hydroclimatic changes in both Tonnel'naya and Kesang areas during the Holocene lag behind the supra-regional climate variability by several thousand years. These observations may reconcile the apparent out-of-phase hydroclimatic variability, inferred from the Holocene lake proxy records, between Westerly Central Asia and Monsoon Asia.
Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.|Department of Earth Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA.
Hai
H
Cheng
Institute of Geology, Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
Christoph
C
Spötl
Sediment- &Isotope Geology, Institute for Geology, Mineralogy &Geophysics, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany.|Godwin Laboratory, Department of Earth Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Sebastian F M
SF
Breitenbach
Department of Earth Sciences, California State University Dominguez Hills, Carson, USA.
Ashish
A
Sinha
Institute for Geosciences, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany.
Jasper A
JA
Wassenburg
Climate Geochemistry Department, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany.
Klaus Peter
KP
Jochum
Institute for Geosciences, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany.
Denis
D
Scholz
Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
Xianglei
X
Li
Sanya Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering, CAS, Sanya, China.
Liang
L
Yi
Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
Youbing
Y
Peng
Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
Yanbin
Y
Lv
School of Geological Sciences and Mineral Resources, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
Pingzhong
P
Zhang
Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Antonina
A
Votintseva
Ekaterinburg Speleological Club (ESC), Ekaterinburg, Russia.
Vadim
V
Loginov
Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
Youfeng
Y
Ning
Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
Gayatri
G
Kathayat
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA.
R Lawrence
RL
Edwards