Highlights—Shifting Monsoons

Monsoonal climates are characterized by seasonal shifts in rainfall and wind direction and intensity, and can also be influenced by longer-term climate change. To better understand the East Asian monsoonal system, Du et al. integrate observations of sedimentary facies, age dates, and proxy paleoclimatic indices from a section in the Miaodao archipelago in the Bohai Sea coastal zone. The data illustrate rapid climate oscillations within Miaodao stratigraphical section (MDS) deposits of isotope substage 5e. Strata from the Eemain period, for which the MDS record is particularly well preserved, indicate that winter monsoon wind strength oscillated numerous times. This millennial-scale climate variability had a quasi-periodicity with cycles of ~1,470 year for the late glacial period, interpreted to be driven by changes in solar activity.

Rapid changes in the East Asian monsoon during the last interglacial in the Bohai Sea coastal zone, China by Shuhuan Du, Baosheng Li, Zhiwen Li, Muhong Chen, Rong Xiang, David Dian Zhang, Dongfeng Niu, and Lanlan Zhang