Bridging the knowledge gap on the evolution of the Asian monsoon during 26-16 Ma

Gan Xie; Jin-Feng Li; Shi-Qi Wang; Yi-Feng Yao; Bin Sun; David K Ferguson; Cheng-Sen Li; Tao Deng; Xiao-Dong Liu; Yu-Fei Wang

doi:10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100110

Bridging the knowledge gap on the evolution of the Asian monsoon during 26-16 Ma

Innovation (Camb). 2021 Apr 29;2(2):100110. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100110. eCollection 2021 May 28.

Authors

Gan Xie^{1

2}, Jin-Feng Li¹, Shi-Qi Wang^{3

2}, Yi-Feng Yao¹, Bin Sun¹, David K Ferguson⁴, Cheng-Sen Li¹, Tao Deng^{3

2}, Xiao-Dong Liu^{5

6}, Yu-Fei Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China.
⁴ Department of Paleontology, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China.
⁶ Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.

Abstract

The evolution of the Asian monsoon from the Late Oligocene to the Early Miocene is poorly understood. Here, we first reconstruct the precipitation data of central Tibet during 26-16 million years ago (Ma), applying the coexistence approach to sedimentary pollen data, and detect an intensified Asian monsoon with ∼1.35 Ma and ∼0.33 Ma cycles. Paleoclimate modeling is used to show the importance of paleogeographic location in the development of the paleomonsoon. In addition, the results of spectral analysis suggest that the fluctuations in the Asian monsoon during 26-16 Ma can be attributed to the long-period cyclicities in obliquity (∼1.2 Ma). These findings provide climate data that can be used to understand the Asian monsoon evolution during the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene and highlight the effects of paleogeographic patterns and long-period orbital forcings on the tectonic-scale evolution of the Asian monsoon.

Keywords: Asian monsoon; Lunpola Basin; Oligocene to Miocene; central Tibetan Plateau; climate change; precipitation.