A 550,000-year record of East Asian monsoon rainfall from 10Be in loess

J Warren Beck; Weijian Zhou; Cheng Li; Zhenkun Wu; Lara White; Feng Xian; Xianghui Kong; Zhisheng An

doi:10.1126/science.aam5825

A 550,000-year record of East Asian monsoon rainfall from ¹⁰Be in loess

Science. 2018 May 25;360(6391):877-881. doi: 10.1126/science.aam5825.

Authors

J Warren Beck^{1

2

3}, Weijian Zhou^{4

5}, Cheng Li³, Zhenkun Wu^{3

6}, Lara White^{7

3}, Feng Xian⁶, Xianghui Kong^{3

6}, Zhisheng An^{6

8}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. wbeck@physics.arizona.edu weijian@loess.llqg.ac.cn.
² Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
³ NSF-Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China. wbeck@physics.arizona.edu weijian@loess.llqg.ac.cn.
⁵ Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China.
⁷ Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
⁸ Institute of Global Environmental Change, Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, China.

PMID: 29798878
DOI: 10.1126/science.aam5825

Abstract

Cosmogenic ¹⁰Be flux from the atmosphere is a proxy for rainfall. Using this proxy, we derived a 550,000-year-long record of East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) rainfall from Chinese loess. This record is forced at orbital precession frequencies, with higher rainfall observed during Northern Hemisphere summer insolation maxima, although this response is damped during cold interstadials. The ¹⁰Be monsoon rainfall proxy is also highly correlated with global ice-volume variations, which differs from Chinese cave δ¹⁸O, which is only weakly correlated. We argue that both EASM intensity and Chinese cave δ¹⁸O are not governed by high-northern-latitude insolation, as suggested by others, but rather by low-latitude interhemispheric insolation gradients, which may also strongly influence global ice volume via monsoon dynamics.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.