Tibet forcing Quaternary stepwise enhancement of westerly jet and central Asian aridification: Carbonate isotope records from deep drilling in the Qaidam salt playa, NE Tibet

The Polygonal Surface Structures in the Dalangtan Playa, Qaidam Basin, NW China: Controlling Factors for Their Formation and Implications for Analogous Martian Landforms

“…The climate change during the past 20,000 years in the Qaidam Basin has been characterized by cycles of warm/wet and cold/dry environments, indicated by regional alternations of the lacustrine records (Q. Huang et al, ). Very hyperarid conditions are the dominant environmental factors today within the Qaidam Basin, with a mean annual temperature of 0–5 °C (e.g., Chen & Bowler, ; W. Han et al, ). Importantly, judging from the high salt contents in the samples (Figure ), concentrated brines should have lowered freezing temperatures significantly.…”

“…The ecological environment of the basin was changed from forest steppe to desert steppe. Annual mean precipitation is less than 100 mm (less than 25 mm in the center and less than 20 mm in the west), while annual evaporation is over 20 times greater than precipitation (e.g., W. Han et al, ; J. Wang et al, ), resulting in a typical arid climate indicated by a striking desert landscape including gravel desert, playa and salt crust, saline lakes and saltmarshes, and various yardang landforms widely distributed in the basin (Xiao et al, ).…”

“…The Qaidam Basin contains distinct depositional subenvironments, each formed under different physical and chemical conditions, which have been described by Zheng (). The interior of the basin is dominated by Cenozoic sediments with a thickness of up to ~12,000 m, derived from its surrounding mountains (W. Han et al, , and references therein). The lithology of upper sediment layers in the basin (upper 400 m to the top) is characterized by cycles of thick gray‐white salt and massive‐laminated evaporate‐bearing mudstone‐siltstone mostly containing gypsum crystals (Li et al, ; J. Wang et al, ).…”

A 7.3–1.6Ma grain size record of interaction between anticline uplift and climate change in the western Qaidam Basin, NE Tibetan Plateau

“…3.6 Ma (Huang and Han, 2007), confirming a drying event at that time. The occurrence of evaporate minerals (Li et al, 2010(Li et al, , 2013, ion geochemistry records (Yang et al, 2013a(Yang et al, , 2013b, carbonate carbon and oxygen isotope records (Han et al, 2014) and variations in the lithofacies of core SG-1 (Fig. 1b) all collectively indicate a long-term stepwise climate drying and lake shrinkage in the WQB after the late Pliocene, with an obvious acceleration in drying at~2.6 Ma, 1.8-1.6 Ma, 1.2-0.8 Ma and 0.6 Ma.…”

“…This is because the QB which has been closed since the Eocene, has experienced the development of significant lake areas and basin tectonics Wang et al, 2006;Fang et al, 2007;Yin et al, 2008aYin et al, , 2008b, and has undergone great climatic changes Miao et al, 2011bMiao et al, , 2013a. In the western Qaidam Basin (WQB), a huge paleo-lake developed until the Quaternary Han et al, 2014). Several NW-trending folds were progressively formed basinwards, with faults propagating into the basin.…”