Episode of Strengthened Summer Monsoon Climate of Younger Dryas Age on the Loess Plateau of Central China

Abstract

The Baxie loess section, just east of the Tibetan Plateau, contains evidence showing that the Asian monsoon climate experienced an abrupt reversal near the end of the last glacial age. Rapid deposition of dust under cool, dry full-glacial conditions gave way to an interval of soil development and reduced dust influx attributed to a strengthening of the warm, moist summer monsoon. A subsequent abrupt increase in dust deposition, a response to a weakening of the summer monsoon, was later followed by renewed soil formation as summer monsoon circulation again intensified during the early Holocene. By one interpretation, the thin upper loess is a manifestation of the European Younger Dryas oscillation; however, in this case the available 14C ages require either that (1) onset of loess deposition lagged the beginning of the Younger Dryas event in Europe by as much as 2000 calibrated 14C years or (2) all the 14C ages are too young, possibly due to contamination. Alternatively, the late-glacial paleosol, the top of which is synchronous with the abrupt end of the late-glacial δ18O anomaly in the Dye 3 Greenland ice core, records the Younger Dryas event. Such an interpretation is consistent with general circulation model simulations of Younger Dryas climate that show strong seasonality and a strengthened summer monsoon, and with marine cores from the western Pacific Ocean that contain evidence of pronounced cooling of surface waters during Younger Dryas time.