Holocene non-orbital climatic events in present-day arid areas of northern Africa and China

Guo, Zhengtang; Petit-Maire, Nicole; Kröpelin, Stefan

doi:10.1016/s0921-8181(00)00037-0

Cited by 122 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…For a long-time, the monsoon precipitation has been regarded as the most important factor that controls the border location of Chinese deserts and sand fields [8,13,[17][18][19]21,23,33,59,60]. This is accurate for the sand fields in the east of Helan Mountains, however, the deserts west of the Helan Mountains, especially the Kumtag desert and Taklimakan desert are barely influenced by the monsoon circulation, and their evolution and environment change were different from the dune fields in the northeastern China.…”

Section: Reliability and Accuracy Of The Reconstruction Of Deserts Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chinese deserts and sand fields in Last Glacial Maximum and Holocene Optimum

et al. 2013

Chin. Sci. Bull.

107

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The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, and the Holocene Optimum (HO, c. 9-5 ka) were characterized by cold-dry and warm-wet climates respectively in the recently geological Earth. How Chinese deserts and sand fields responded to these distinctive climatic changes is still not clear, however. To reconstruct environments of the deserts and sand fields during the LGM and HO is helpful to understand the forcing mechanisms of environment change in this arid region, and to test paleoclimatic modeling results. Through our long-term field and laboratory investigations, 400 optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages and more than 100 depositional records in the Chinese deserts and sand fields were obtained; on the basis of these data, we reconstruct spatial distributions of the deserts and sand fields during the LGM and HO. Our results show that the sand fields of Mu Us, Hunshandake, Horqin and Hulun Buir in northern and northeastern China had expanded 25%, 37%, 38% and 270%, respectively, during the LGM; the sand fields of Gonghe in the northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau had expanded 20%, and the deserts of Badain Jaran, Tengger in central northern China had expanded 39% and 29% separately during the LGM; the deserts of Taklimakan, Gurbantünggüt and Kumtag in northwestern China had expanded 10%-20% respectively, compared to their modern areas. On the other hand, all of the sand fields were nearly completely covered by vegetation during the HO; the deserts in northwestern and central northern China were reduced by around 5%-20% in area during this time. Lakes in this arid region were probably expanded during the HO but this conclusion needs more investigation. Compared with the geological distributions of deserts and sand fields, human activity has clearly changed (expanded) the area of active sand dunes at the present time. Our observations show that environmental conditions of Chinese deserts and sand fields are controlled by regional climate together with human activity. deserts and sand fields in China, Last Glacial Maximum, Holocene Optimum, OSL dating, active sand dunes Citation:

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Section: Reliability and Accuracy Of The Reconstruction Of Deserts Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chinese deserts and sand fields in Last Glacial Maximum and Holocene Optimum

et al. 2013

Chin. Sci. Bull.

107

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“…Progress in the understanding of climate and vegetation changes in this region has resulted in a number of regional meso-scale reconstructions and palaeoclimatic/palaeoecosystem datasets during recent years (Sanlaville, 1992;Lioubimtseva, 1995Lioubimtseva, , 1999Petit-Maire et al, 1995;Hoelzmann et al, 1998;Jolly et al, 1998;Guo et al, 2000).…”

Section: The Saharo-arabian Desertsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change in arid environments: revisiting the past to understand the future

Lioubimtseva

2004

Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment

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Arid regions are expected to undergo significant changes under a scenario of climate warming, but there is considerable variability and uncertainty in these estimates between different scenarios. The complexities of precipitation changes, vegetation-climate feedbacks and direct physiological effects of CO2 on vegetation present particular challenges for climate change modelling of arid regions. Great uncertainties exist in the prediction of arid ecosystem responses to elevated CO2 and global warming. Palaeodata provide important information about the past frequency, intensity and subregional patterns of change in the world’s deserts that cannot always be captured by the climatic models. However, it is important to bear in mind that the global mechanisms of Quaternary climatic variability were different from present-day trends, and any direct analogies between the past and present should be treated with great caution. Although palaeodata provide valuable information about possible past changes in the vegetation-climate system, it is unlikely that the history of the world’s deserts is a key for their future.

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“…It is well established that the Asian monsoon weakened through the Holocene in response to the gradual decrease in summer insolation (e.g., Prell and Kutzbach, 1992;Overpeck et al, 1996;An et al, 2000) Recently, higher-resolution records have provided hints of abrupt climate transitions and fluctuations superimposed upon this gradual trend (e.g., Gasse and Van Campo, 1994;Guo et al, 2000;Morrill et al, 2003;Overpeck et al, 2005). Resolution, age control and spatial coverage are, however, currently insufficient to develop a detailed picture of regional monsoon variability on decadal to century timescales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene variations in the Asian monsoon inferred from the geochemistry of lake sediments in central Tibet

et al. 2006

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We present a record of monsoon variations for the early and middle Holocene that is inferred from the geochemistry of sediment cores from Ahung Co, a lake in central Tibet. The resolution of this record is better than 50 yr and the age model is derived from radiocarbon ages of terrestrial charcoal, which eliminates errors associated with the lake hard-water effect. We made down-core geochemical measurements of % carbonate, % organic carbon, C/N and d 13 C of bulk organic matter, d 13 C and d 18O of carbonate, and % dolomite. Proxy calibration and modern water-balance reconstruction show that these are proxies for lake depth and the amount of monsoon precipitation. We find that lake level and monsoon precipitation have been decreasing at Ahung Co since the early Holocene (¨7500 cal yr B.P.). Superimposed on this trend are rapid declines in monsoon rainfall at 7000 -7500 and 4700 cal yr B.P. and seven century-scale wet -dry oscillations. The cores do not contain sediment from the last¨4000 yr. Surface sediments from the lake accumulated during the 20th century, however. From this, we argue that lake levels have risen again recently following a late Holocene dry period.

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Holocene non-orbital climatic events in present-day arid areas of northern Africa and China

Cited by 122 publications

References 21 publications

Chinese deserts and sand fields in Last Glacial Maximum and Holocene Optimum

Chinese deserts and sand fields in Last Glacial Maximum and Holocene Optimum

Climate change in arid environments: revisiting the past to understand the future

Holocene variations in the Asian monsoon inferred from the geochemistry of lake sediments in central Tibet

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