Abstract. The global climate system experienced a series of drastic changes during the Cenozoic. In Asia, these include the climate transformation from a zonal pattern to a monsoon-dominated pattern, the disappearance of typical subtropical aridity, and the onset of inland deserts. Despite major advances in the last two decades in characterizing and understanding these climate phenomena, disagreements persist relative to the timing, behaviors and underlying causes. This paper addresses these issues mainly based on two lines of evidence. First, we compiled newly collected data from geological indicators of the Cenozoic environment in China as paleoenvironmental maps of ten intervals. In confirming the earlier observation that a zonal climate pattern was transformed into a monsoonal one, the maps within the Miocene indicate that this change was achieved by the early Miocene, roughly consistent with the onset of loess deposition in China. Although a monsoon-like regime would have existed in the Eocene, it was restricted to tropical-subtropical regions. The latitudinal oscillations of the climate zones during the Paleogene are likely attributable to the imbalance in evolution of polar ice-sheets between the two hemispheres. Secondly, we examine the relevant depositional and soil forming processes of the Miocene loess-soil sequences to determine the circulation characteristics with emphasis on the early Miocene. Continuous eolian deposition in the middle reaches of the Yellow River since the early Miocene firmly indicates the formation of inland deserts, which have been constantly maintained during the past 22 Ma. Grain-size gradients between loess sections indicate northerly dust-carrying winds from northern sources, a clear indication of an Asian winter monsoon system. Meanwhile, well-developed Luvisols show evidence that moisture from the oceans reached northern China. This evidence shows the coexistence of two kinds of circulations, one from the ocean carrying moisture and another from the inland deserts transporting dust. The formation of the early Miocene paleosols resulted from interactive soil forming and dust deposition processes in these two seasonally alternating monsoonal circulations. The much stronger development of the early Miocene soils compared to those in the Quaternary loess indicates that summer monsoons were either significantly stronger, more persistent through the year, or both. These lines of evidence indicate a joint change in circulation and inland aridity by the early Miocene and suggest a dynamic linkage of them. Our recent sensitivity tests with a general circulation model, along with relevant geological data, suggest that the onset of these contrasting wet/dry responses, as well as the change from the "planetary" subtropical aridity pattern to the "inland" aridity pattern, resulted from the combined effects of Tibetan uplift and withdrawal of the Paratethys seaway in central Asia, as suggested by earlier experiments. The spreading of South China Sea also helped to enhance the south-north contrast of humidity. The Miocene loess record provides a vital insight that these tectonic factors had evolved by the early Miocene to a threshold sufficient to cause this major climate reorganization in Asia.

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The last interglaciation (-130 to 116 ka) is a time period with a strong astronomically induced seasonal forcing of insolation compared to the present. Proxy records indicate a significantly different climate to that of the modern, in particular Arctic summer warming and higher eustatic sea level. Because the forcings are relatively well constrained, it provides an opportunity to test numerical models which are used for future climate prediction. In this paper we compile a set of climate model simulations of the early last interglaciation (130 to 125 ka), encompassing a range of model complexities. We compare the simulations to each other and to a recently published compilation of last interglacial temperature estimates.We show that the annual mean response of the models is rather small, with no clear signal in many regions. However, the seasonal response is more robust, and there is significant agreement amongst models as to the regions of warming vs cooling. However, the quantitative agreement of the model simulations with data is poor, with the models in general underestimating the magnitude of response seen in the proxies. Taking possible seasonal biases in the proxies into account improves the agreement, but only marginally. However, a lack of uncertainty estimates in the data does not allow us to draw firm conclusions. Instead, this paper points to several ways in which both modelling and data could be improved, to allow a more robust model-data comparison. © Author(s) 2013

Abstract. We correlate the China loess and Antarctica ice records to address the inter-hemispheric climate link over the past 800 ka. The results show a broad coupling between Asian and Antarctic climates at the glacial-interglacial scale. However, a number of decoupled aspects are revealed, among which marine isotope stage (MIS) 13 exhibits a strong anomaly compared with the other interglacials. It is characterized by unusually positive benthic oxygen (δ 18 O) and carbon isotope (δ 13 C) values in the world oceans, cooler Antarctic temperature, lower summer sea surface temperature in the South Atlantic, lower CO 2 and CH 4 concentrations, but by extremely strong Asian, Indian and African summer monsoons, weakest Asian winter monsoon, and lowest Asian dust and iron fluxes. Pervasive warm conditions were also evidenced by the records from northern high-latitude regions. These consistently indicate a warmer Northern Hemisphere and a cooler Southern Hemisphere, and hence a strong asymmetry of hemispheric climates during MIS-13. Similar anomalies of lesser extents also occurred during MIS-11 and MIS-5e. Thus, MIS-13 provides a case that the Northern Hemisphere experienced a substantial warming under relatively low concentrations of greenhouse gases. It suggests that the global climate system possesses a natural variability that is not predictable from the simple response of northern summer insolation and atmospheric CO 2 changes. During MIS-13, both hemispheres responded in different ways leading to anomalous continental, marine and atmospheric conditions at the global scale. The correlations also suggest that the marine δ 18 O record is not always a reliable indicator of the northern ice-volume changes, and that the asymmetry of hemispheric climates is one of the prominent factors controlCorrespondence to: Z. T. Guo (ztguo@mail.iggcas.ac.cn) ling the strength of Asian, Indian and African monsoon circulations, most likely through modulating the position of the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and land-sea thermal contrasts.

Abstract.The dominant modes of variability of precipitation for the whole of China over the past millennium and the mechanism governing their spatial structure remain unclear. This is mainly due to insufficient high-resolution proxy records of precipitation in western China. Numerous treering chronologies have recently been archived in publicly available databases through PAGES2k activities, and these provide an opportunity to refine precipitation field reconstructions for China. Based on 479 proxy records, including 371 tree-ring width chronologies, a tree-ring isotope chronology, and 107 drought/flood indices, we reconstruct the precipitation field for China for the past half millennium using the optimal information extraction method. A total of 3631 of 4189 grid points in the reconstruction field passed the cross-validation process, accounting for 86.68 % of the total number of grid points. The first leading mode of variability of the reconstruction shows coherent variations over most of China. The second mode is a north-south dipole in eastern China characterized by variations of the same sign in western China and northern China (except for Xinjiang province). It is likely controlled by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability. The third mode is a "sandwich" triple mode in eastern China including variations of the same sign in western China and central China. The last two modes are reproduced by most of the six coupled climate models' last millennium simulations performed in the framework of the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project Phase III (PMIP3). In particular, the link of the second mode with ENSO is confirmed by the models. However, there is a mismatch between models and proxy reconstructions in the time development of different modes. This mismatch suggests the important role of internal variability in the reconstructed precipitation mode variations of the past 500 years.

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The Last Interglaciation (∼130 to 116 ka) is a time period with a strong astronomically-induced seasonal forcing of insolation compared to modern. Proxy records indicate a significantly different climate to that of the modern, in particular Arctic summer warming and higher eustatic sea level. Because the forcings are relatively well constrained, it provides an opportunity to test numerical models which are used for future climate prediction. In this paper, we compile a set of climate model simulations of the early Last Interglaciation (130 to 125 ka), encompassing a range of model complexity. We compare the models to each other, and to a recently published compilation of Last Interglacial temperature estimates. We show that the annual mean response of the models is rather small, with no clear signal in many regions. However, the seasonal response is more robust, and there is significant agreement amongst models as to the regions of warming vs. cooling. However, the quantitative agreement of the models with data is poor, with the models in general underestimating the magnitude of response seen in the proxies. Taking possible seasonal biases in the proxies into account improves the agreement marginally, but the agreement is still far from perfect. However, a lack of uncertainty estimates in the data does not allow us to draw firm conclusions. Instead, this paper points to several ways in which both modelling and data could be improved, to allow a more robust model-data comparison

No abstract